


Boom

by HerRenegadeHeart



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Sisters, Suspense, Violence, super sisters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-08
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-05-12 14:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5668981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HerRenegadeHeart/pseuds/HerRenegadeHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kryptonite bomb almost killed both Alex and Kara. Now they want to know who was behind it, but figuring that out won't be an easy task. In fact, it could be quite deadly. (The much-requested sequel to "Tick, Tick...")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It begins, the sequel to "Tick, Tick..."! It is DEFINITELY recommended that you read that fic first (or this one isn't going to make a whole lot of sense). I know the description of "Tick, Tick..." makes it sound very Christmas-y (and that people are super over the Christmas season now) so it's a bit of a turn-off, but it really has very little to do with Christmas, so you should absolutely give it a go if you haven't already!

 

It was the New Year and Alex's resolution? To stop feeling like crap and to figure out just who in the hell had put a bomb in her sister's apartment. Problem was, she had been blown up, impaled, and had fallen through the floor into the neighbor's apartment below Kara's (a neighbor who had at the time thankfully been in Central City for Christmas) not eleven days ago and resultant injuries had seen to it that she be banned from work until she, according to Hank ( _J'onn_ ), "possessed the ability to move without wincing" and could "stand without aid or the need to sit down every ten minutes". Apparently she was no use to him only "halfway functional" (again, his words). So yes, she was finding her resolution a rather difficult one to accomplish at the moment and she did not like it one bit.

"What precisely are you doing?" a voice rang out.

Alex whipped her head around toward the front door to see her sister standing there with her hands on her hips. _Busted_. "I am… resting?" she offered.

Kara raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Out of your bed, at the table, with an open laptop in front of you?"

"Yes, precisely." Kara looked thoroughly unimpressed so Alex rolled her eyes and gestured vaguely around the kitchen. "WiFi signal is better over here…"

"You're not even supposed to be on your laptop, Alex. You're supposed to be _in bed_ ," the younger sister sighed. "Do I need to call your mother and have her come back to watch you?"

Alex's eyes widened, alarmed. "God, no. Do you know how long it took me to convince her to leave in the first place?" Since Christmas had been ruined by Kara's apartment getting blown up followed by Alex being stuck in the DEO infirmary for the five days after, New Years had ended up being their day for celebrating with Eliza… not that very much celebrating had actually occurred. With Alex high on painkillers and sleeping most of the time, her mom fretting about every little thing, and Kara doing her 'I'm trying to be peppy to keep everyone happy, but I'm not-so-secretly feeling incredibly guilty for circumstances I had no control of' thing… well, it hadn't been the best holiday. At least though they had been alive to (somewhat) celebrate it together.

"Actually, no, because I was at _work_ , getting sniped at for wearing the same pair of pants two days in a row." Kara flopped onto the nearby couch, wiggling down into the soft brown leather, a displeased expression on her face.

"You told her your apartment blew up, yes?" Alex questioned, turning in her chair the best she could to face her sister. "That all your clothes pretty much burned?"

"I did."

"And…?"

"And… she made a dismissive noise and said something along the lines of, 'Well, I suppose that's what happens when you live on _that_ side of town'."

"That woman is a menace."

Kara looked conflicted for a moment before shaking her head. "No, she's—"

"Mean? Manipulative? Degrading? Self-absorbed?"

" _Cat_ ," Kara finished. "She's just... Cat."

Alex shook her head, but inwardly smiled. Her mom had been right when she said that Kara still believed that deep down everyone was a good as she was. It wasn't true, of course, some people were just monsters, but she still loved that sister tried to see the light in every person.

She leaned back a little more in the hardwood chair, mindful not to pull the freshly-mended scar from the surgery she'd had to remove the kryptonite shard and fix the damage to her spleen. She'd only just had the outer layer of stitches removed (the internal ones, being dissolvable, were left alone, of course) and _did not_ want to somehow reopen the wound. "Well, I did tell you that you could borrow some of my clothes," she pointed out.

"Which I do appreciate," Kara said, "but something like ninety-eight percent of your clothing is black and it's just… a bit much."

"Says the girl who flies around in blue, red, and gold."

"Hush, you."

Alex blew an amused soft puff of air out of her nose and smirked.

Kara pushed herself back up off of the couch and crossed to Alex. "Have you eaten?" she asked, glancing inside the fridge. "Did you take your antibiotics? Did you manage to take a shower?"

"Uh-uh." Alex held up hand, belaying further questions from her sister. "You're fussing. You're not allowed to do that. I am the older sister. Only _I_ get to fuss."

"Says who?"

"Me. The older sister. The one who makes the rules."

Kara rolled her eyes. "You know, _technically_ —"

"Nope! I know what you're going to say and it's _not going to work_. Time in the Phantom Zone does not count because _there is no time_ in the Phantom Zone. Or at least, time doesn't pass there." _Whatever_. It was still a bit of a mind-boggling thing to fully understand even for her.

"You're feisty today," Kara observed, eyeing Alex as she slipped into one of the free chairs at the table. "You must be feeling better."

"More like I'm feeling stir-crazy," Alex corrected with a sigh. "Please tell me you've come here with word from Hank saying I can come back into work?"

"No…" Kara said, raising an eyebrow. "And wouldn't he just talk you himself if he wanted you to come in?"

Alex averted her eyes for a moment and fingered a chip in the wood of the table they were sitting at. "He's stopped answering my calls two days ago," she muttered, "and now even if I leave a message he won't even call me back."

Kara snorted and ducked her head, avoiding most of Alex's glare. "So he just stopped talking to you?" she asked, biting back a grin.

"Well… no," Alex admitted slowly. "When I last spoke to him, he grumbled something about how if I didn't stop molesting his phone, he would never get any work done and that if they found anything, he would let me know. He ended the call with, 'So I'm going to ignore you now,' and hung up."

"Wow," Kara said. "The last person to actively ignore you was Ralph Villegas in tenth grade. You really must have been driving Hank insane." She finished the sentence with a teasing grin.

Alex narrowed her eyes at her sister and pointed an accusing finger at her. "Firstly, that harassment was done on your behalf and secondly, if you remember, two weeks later Ralph was your date to the spring formal. Persistence pays off."

"What _I_ remember is walking down the stairs in my pretty cornflower blue dress, hoping to see at the very least a look of awe if not adoration on his face, but instead all I saw was terror as he watched you glaring at him from across the room."

Alex shrugged. "Sometimes people need a bit of the fear of God put into them in order for them to fully be able to appreciate the world around them."

"Uh...huh." Kara crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

"What?" Alex threw up her hands. "Look, Ralph Villegas was a self-centered mama's boy. Cute, but still an ass. But _you_ ," she softened slightly, "you were just so in love with him."

"I wouldn't say _so_ in love…" Kara said, blushing.

"Well, my point is, I just want you to be happy and if that involves _molesting_ phones or threatening to expose the deep, dark, homoerotic secrets of teenage boys, I will do it."

Kara smiled. "Awww, Alex…" Then she paused and frowned. "What? Wait. Homoerotic?"

Alex bit back a grin and shrugged. "I believe she goes by Regina Villegas now."

Kara just stared at Alex for a good 30 seconds before she seemed to fully process the statement, then she gave a slow nod and said, "Good for her." She smiled again. "Dinner. We should eat it." She popped back up onto her feet and not for the first time (or even the hundredth), Alex envied her sister's healing abilities.

"That would require actually having dinner to eat," Alex replied dryly.

"You make an excellent point." Kara rocked back on her heels slightly, swinging her arms. "So what do you want? Cripple's choice tonight."

Alex arched a very precise 'Excuse me?' eyebrow at her blonde sibling. "Cripple? Really?" Yes, she'd managed a partial tear to a ligament in her knee when she'd fallen through the floor, but she wasn't _crippled_. Kara just laughed and Alex felt a sudden need to treat her sister to a bit of reprisal, if only to shut her up for a moment. "Well, for that, I want Vittoria's."

Kara stopped laughing and blinked. "In Philadelphia?"

"Yep," Alex confirmed, "and you're buying."

"But that's—"

"Uh-uh," she cut off. "Cripple's choice, remember?"

Kara's open mouth shut with an audible click. She seemed to consider it for a second before she narrowed an eye and pointed a finger at Alex, saying, "Fine, but it's just because you almost died. _Any other time_ —"

"You would still go."

A beat and then Kara's bravado morphed back into a sweet girl smile. "I would still go," she conceded.

Alex smirked.

"Okay, I'll be back!" Kara said as she headed for the door. If she had been at her own apartment, Alex knew, she would have just jumped out the window and flown off, but unlike Kara, Alex didn't live on the top floor, so her sister always had to use the door and go down to the alley to fly off just to limit the chance of anyone seeing her using her powers. "Won't be long. Love you!" And she was out the door.

"Love you, too," Alex called after her, knowing full well that Kara could still hear her even down the hall.

* * *

It was twenty minutes later when Alex had finally given up attempting to get any work done on her computer and had retired to the couch. She tried to take in some of the book she had bought months ago, but had never had the time to read. Her mind though was just so chaotic, so tormented about trying to figure out who had tried to kill her sister that she couldn't focus. She turned on the TV instead, but didn't pay attention. She was just too lost in her own thoughts.

So when the knock at the door came out of nowhere, she was rather startled. Her instinct was to reach for her DEO-issued sidearm that always seemed to be strapped to her thigh, but then her brain caught up with the situation and she realized she didn't actually have it with her.

A second knock rang out and it made her tense. Her eyes moved from the door to the side table next to it where she kept her keys before she gingerly pushed herself off of the couch and limped over to it. She pulled the drawer out slowly so that it made no sound and reached inside, pulling out her personal weapon. M1911 pistol in hand, she inched to the door and very slowly peered through the peephole… only to see a very familiar face.

The breath she hadn't even realized she had been holding whooshed out of her lungs and she immediately pulled the door open. "Sir?"

J'onn (as Hank, of course) stood there, same stoic expression on his face that was always there… until he saw the gun in her hand, then he raised an eyebrow. "Expecting someone?"

She glanced down at it in her hand, then without missing a beat, replied, "I've been told aliens are real. Can't be too careful." She put the gun back into the side table drawer.

After she and Kara had made the decision to go back to stay at Alex's apartment after the bombing instead of going to a safe house, the director had assigned them a security detail until they could figure out who had targeted Kara, but even with knowing that they were protected around the clock, Alex was still on edge.

J'onn blinked mildly at her. "I don't think aliens use front doors," he said in perfectly plain manner.

Alex pursed her lips. _Said the alien._

"I'm sorry to just drop by," he continued, "but I thought it would be easier than having you come into work. May I?" He motioned toward the inside of the apartment.

"Oh, uh, yes, Sir, come in." She made a small welcoming motion with her hand and watched as the alien from Mars who was her boss (something she was still trying to wrap her mind around) stepped over the threshold. He glanced around and then turned to face her once more as she shut the door. "Your sister here?" he questioned.

She shook her head. "No, she's out getting dinner." J'onn gave a nod, though he returned to silently surveying the apartment from where he stood as if he was either still looking for Kara or something else… Something dangerous? She noticed his more-serious-than-usual face and frowned slightly. "Why? Is there something wrong?"

He looked back at her, but seemed almost reluctant to speak. "I need to show you something," he replied after a beat.

Her brow furrowed even deeper. "And you don't want Kara to see?" she asked warily.

"I thought you'd want to see it first."

Alex felt a tingle of dread snake down her spine and settle like a twisting weight in her stomach. Whatever he wanted to show her, it was bad enough that he wanted to give her the option of when (and even if) to tell Kara. That did not bode well. "Okay…"

He held up a flash drive and then nodded toward the laptop that was still on the kitchen table. She realized he was asking for her permission, so she gave a nod in return. "Go ahead," she replied and limped behind him as he made his way across her apartment to the kitchen.

"Have a seat," he instructed and while her instinct was to protest, to prove that she was better, that she was capable, the tightness around his eyes compelled her to follow his order. He plugged the flash drive into the USB port on the side. "We pulled security footage from your sister's building and the ones around it to see if we could find anything," he began.

Alex nodded. Pulling security footage was standard procedure in these sorts of situations and she'd actually had them, much to Kara's dismay ( _"You're meant to be resting, Alex!"_ she'd chastised), send her what they'd found. "Yes, I viewed the footage myself. There wasn't anything there."

"Well, I had them pull footage from three blocks over as well."

"Three blocks over? Why?"

The man regarded her with a searching look, as if he were trying to figure out something very important. Finally though, he spoke. "That's where we found your car."

Alex frowned. Where they'd found her car? She silently asked herself the question in hopes of knocking loose some answers in her mind, some memories of doing such a thing, but it was all blank. She knew it made sense —she often had to park further away than she normally would during the holidays for the sole fact that there were so many more people in the city visiting family and friends— but she had no memory of it this year.

She took a breath and focused her eyes on the computer screen. "Show me."

J'onn pulled up the video file and pressed play.

Alex watched silently, watched as she parked, as she got out of the car, as she moved to the back and popped the trunk. She could feel her pulse beginning to speed up and she felt a little bit sick to her stomach. It was like watching another person with her face doing these things and for the briefest of seconds she considered that as a possibility, but then why didn't she remember anything and how had she ended up at Kara's apartment that evening if the person in the footage was someone else?

"There are two other angles, but this one shows it the clearest," J'onn said, drawing Alex's full attention back to the screen.

For a moment, she wondered why this was important, there didn't seem to be anything suspicious or interesting happening, but _then…_ then she saw it — _the red and gold present_. The sick feeling in her stomach swelled to full-blown nausea.

She watched herself as she picked up the present and put it into a cardboard box before she covered it with the rest of the gifts she'd gotten for Kara and her mom. Then she picked up the box, locked the car, and headed in the direction of Kara's apartment.

The video froze just before she walked out of frame and Alex just sat there staring at it, staring at the box in her hands.

"We checked the cameras all along the street and used the footage to track your progression to your sister's building," the director said quietly. "The package never left your hands…"

"I didn't..." _But she had._ She'd just watched herself. She'd been the one who had brought it over. _The bomb._ She was the one who had planted the bomb that had almost killed her sister.

"I know," he said.

Alex shook her head, pain lancing behind her eyes as she tried to make sense of it all. "But I— I don't remember, Sir. I-I... I _wouldn't_."

"Alex, I know."

She felt a clawing panic scrape its way up her throat. She couldn't have done it. _But you did,_ a burning voice in the back of her mind hissed _._ The security footage clearly showed it. "She's my sister. I would never hurt her, not on purpose." She needed to convince him, needed to convince herself. She knew she wouldn't, but she had...

" _Alex_. I know."

His emphatic tone drew her attention to his face and she noticed behind his usual stoicism, a glimpse of concern and pain… _for her_. She suddenly found it very difficult to keep it together, to not just break down right there and then. "How?" she asked, voice hoarse. How could he know when even she didn't? "How is this possible? How could I do something like that and not remember?"

"You've seen firsthand what some of these aliens can do," he pointed out. "Jemm… Myself."

"And you know I didn't do this on purpose because… you read my mind?"

"Yes, when I told you about where we found your car," he replied, "But I also know this wasn't your doing because I know _you_ , Alex, and I know how much you care for your sister."

Alex moved past the part where he'd gone into her mind without permission and after sucking in a grounding breath, asked, "So if you read my mind, what did you learn?"

A slight crease appeared between J'onn's brows, a look of unease slipping across his features. "There are no memories there. It's as if something was placed in your mind, a block of some sort, that prevented you from even making the memories. Or if that's not the case, they were forced so far down that they're shrouded in blackness, as that is all I can detect."

Alex grit her teeth. What was the use of having a telepath for a boss when his powers were useless during the time when they were needed most? "So, what? I just won't ever remember?"

"I'm not sure," he told her, "and I won't be until we figure out what exactly caused the block. It could very well be that you won't remember, or over time the memories could return. If it's the latter, it's likely the memories that will surface first will be the ones closest to when you became aware of yourself and your surroundings again."

"Well, that doesn't help us much," she sighed. "We already know what happened right before then. I drove to my sister's, got the bomb out of my car, and put it under my sister's tree." She drew a hand harshly through her hair and blew out a breath of frustration.

"I'm sorry I don't have more answers for you right now, Alex," J'onn said, tone sincere. "But we will figure it out. On that, you have my word."

Alex nodded, thankful to work for and be friends with a man (alien) who possessed both honor and as much doggedness as she did. "Thank you, Sir," she said, suddenly feeling incredibly weary. "Do you mind if I keep this?" She made motion at the flash drive. "So I can show Kara." Otherwise she knew no matter what she said, her sister wouldn't believe that she had been the one.

J'onn nodded. "Of course." He took a step back from the table. "I will let you know when we find out more."

"Sir?"

He was turning toward the front door, but paused to look back at her.

"I can't sit here anymore," she told him, exhausted, but full of raw determination. "I don't need to go into the field or anything, but I need to do something. I need to come back to work. I need to—" She needed figure out who had wiped her mind. She needed to figure out who had forced her to almost kill her sister.

She needed to make them pay.

He seemed to consider her words for a few moments before he finally inclined his head to her. "I'll see you tomorrow, Agent Danvers."

Alex felt a brief wave of relief swell, glad that he wasn't going to fight her anymore about her needing to stay home and heal, but almost as immediately as it had risen, the relief receded back into the ocean of fear, uncertainty, and anger. There were far too many unknowns right now and it made her feel sick with worry. Far worse though, it made her feel powerless.

Pushing herself to her feet, she moved stiffly across the apartment behind J'onn and offered him a wan smile by way of a goodbye before shutting the door behind his retreating form. She flipped the lock and turned around, leaning back against the door. She stared across the room at the frozen image of herself on the computer.

Dread, cold and consuming, surged and she felt suddenly breathless. How could this have happened? _What_ had happened?

She closed her eyes. She just wished she didn't have to tell Kara.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! So fair warning, with the holidays over I have a lot less time to work on my fics, so the chapters for this one will not be coming out quite as quickly as "Tick, Tick..."'s did. I will try my best, however, to get them to you as timely as possible.
> 
> Also, as you likely noticed, while I've always written from Kara's POV in every other Supergirl story I've done, I decided to take on the challenge of writing this one from Alex's. I might, however, end up flip-flopping back and forth between Alex and Kara (simply because I find Kara much easier to write). So it may be one chapter from Alex and one from Kara, etc, etc. It will all depend on what the muse demands of me. I promise I won't make it too difficult to figure out!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my loves! I just want to thank you all so much for your outstanding support and kind words. It thrills me to see so many people enjoying something that I was sure no one would even take notice of. You all are amazing!
> 
> Also, forgive me for taking forever to get this chapter out to you! My muse has been particularly fickle these past 3 or so weeks and this chapter didn't quite turn out how it was in my head, but here it is regardless! Enjoy.

 

_It burned._

_The scream caught, silenced by the suffocating, throat-seizing pain._

_No, no, no. Wrong._

_Can't._

_White door. 4A._

_Red and gold._

_Sparkling lights._

_"...You and yours be filled with_ explosive _joy…"_

_Blonde rushing. "Oof!" Breathless. Blinding blaze and heat._

_**Red** _ _._

Alex nearly choked on the harsh gasp of air she swallowed as she jolted upward in bed. A tearing ache from her fresh scar ripped up her side at the wrenching movement and she winced, unable to prevent the hissing sound from escaping her lips. She pressed her hand to the still-healing wound and doubled forward at the waist, clenching her eyes shut until the spike of pain ebbed back down to a throb.

After a few moments, she grit her teeth and slowly straightened her spine, testing her side to see if it was going to flare again. It twinged, but nothing beyond that.

Her head, though,... her head was _screaming_. Vicious and slicing like hot spikes behind her eyes, it stabbed and seared. She pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead and pushed hard against the bridge of her nose, trying to breathe through it.

"Alex?"

 _Of course_ Kara would have overheard and come to check on her.

Alex raised her head and squinted at her sister's silhouette in the doorway. Kara stepped forward into the moonlight that was shining through the windows and Alex could easily see the concern on her sister's face. "You okay?" the blonde asked.

Sucking in another breath, Alex thought to nod, but paused before the action and reconsidered. "Yeah," she said, raspy and strained.

"Alex…"

"Headache," Alex confessed, though the pain was already receding.

Kara frowned and said, "I'll get you some water," before she disappeared back out of the room. A few seconds later she reappeared at Alex's side, Advil and water in hand. "Here."

"Thanks." Taking both, Alex dropped the Advil into her mouth and took a sip of the water, washing it down. She looked back up to see that Kara still had the same expression on her face, the one that spoke of fear for Alex and a not-quite-hidden guilt that plagued her for every little thing she couldn't control. "I'm okay," Alex assured her and the younger Danvers smiled, though it wasn't quite convincing.

"What happened?" Kara asked, blue eyes searching.

Alex felt incredibly reluctant to say, but she couldn't deny her sister, not when Kara was regarding her in that sweet, earnest, worried sort a way that was so typical of her. "Dream," she said. "I had a dream and I just sat up too fast."

"What was it about?"

Alex watched as Kara lowered herself onto the edge of the bed, clearly deciding that needing to know what the dream was about was more important than either of them actually sleeping. There was something in her eyes though, almost like a tentative suspicion, like somehow she instinctively knew something more was going on. There were times when Kara was so very trusting and clueless that Alex almost worried for her safety, but there were other times, like now, where she marveled at the depth of Kara's intuition.

It only ever really seemed to be with her though that Kara saw more than what was just presented on the surface. Alex supposed that made sense. They were sisters and more than that, they were incredibly close. After spending years helping Kara acclimate to living on Earth, she had learned to read her little sister very well. Of course Kara had been able to do the same with her.

It was part of the reason why keeping her secret about being an agent with the DEO had been so very difficult, so very exhausting. Whenever she'd been around Kara, she'd had to be on the top of her game, always careful of what she did or said so that Kara wouldn't pick up on any inconsistencies or clues. She'd managed it, yes, but she had hated every moment of lying to her sister.

"I planted the bomb," Alex blurted suddenly, the weight of not having told Kara yet far too much for her to carry any longer. She'd meant to tell Kara when she'd gotten back with dinner, but just… hadn't been able to. Kara had arrived all triumphant and adorable, presenting the food she'd picked up like some great prize that she had fought valiantly to acquire. Alex just hadn't had the heart to shatter her sibling's cheerful mood. "I did it. It was me."

Kara blinked, looking a bit startled. "It's okay, Alex. It was just a dream," she said, not understanding. She reached forward and squeezed Alex's hand gently. "You didn't _actually_ plant the bo—"

Alex shook her head, drawing her hand away and dropping her eyes so that she wouldn't see the undoubtedly confused and hurt look on her sister's face at the withdrawal. She just… she couldn't handle being comforted, not when it had been her who had done the wronging… even if it had been against her will. "No," she whispered, "I did, Kara."

Kara shook her head slightly. "I'm confused. Are we talking about your dream or—"

"Hank came over last night," Alex cut in, the need to get it off her chest sudden and desperate. "They pulled more security footage and cleaned it up. It shows me getting the bomb out of my car and bringing it into your building."

"What? That- that doesn't make any sense."

"No, it doesn't, but it's still what happened."

"Alex, that's not…that's not possible..." Kara's tone strained with disbelief.

"The laptop."

"What?"

Alex motioned to the side table. She could have reached and gotten it herself, but she didn't want to pull her side again so soon after wrenching it. Kara frowned and leaned forward, grabbing it and handing it over.

Opening the laptop, Alex pulled up the file, but then paused, suddenly conflicted. She wanted to prove her point, to show Kara what had been discovered, but at the same time, she dreaded damaging her sister's insatiable optimism. She hated the idea of dampening her spirit even a little bit.

The choice was made for her, however, when Kara tugged the laptop back out of Alex's hands and pressed play, clearly determined to see for herself.

Alex watched as her sister's expression quickly went from fiercely determined to not believe, to confused, to pained. When the video stopped, freezing on the last frame, Kara just stared at it as Alex had the first time she'd watched it.

"That doesn't make any sense," Kara whispered, repeating her earlier thought. "You wouldn't…"

Alex felt her throat clench painfully. Her heart hurt for Kara and she felt guilty for the dimming of the light in her sister's eyes. Everything was just so confusing. She felt so lost and while she was grateful to have her sister by her side, she hated that Kara was now having to make this dangerous journey with her, especially when it had already almost cost her her life.

She was about to speak, to apologize, to explain what little she knew, to… say _something_ , but then Kara looked up at her, a frown on her face.

"Wait, last night? You've known since last night?" The expression that passed over Kara's face was that of a kicked puppy. "That explains why you were acting so weird at dinner… but I thought we agreed? No secrets."

"It wasn't a secret," Alex sighed. "I was going to tell you. I just… I needed time to process it."

"But Alex—"

" _Kara_. I planted a _bomb_ in your apartment. I almost got us both killed." She swallowed hard against the jagged lump of emotions in her throat, her voice turning raw. "I almost got _you_ killed. I just… I needed five minutes to wrap my head around it."

Kara must have picked up on the struggle within Alex because suddenly there were tears in the younger sister's eyes and a look of sad helplessness on her face. She leaned forward and hugged Alex as tight as she no doubt dared. "I'm so sorry this happened to you," she whispered, sniffling.

It didn't sound like a passing sentiment, like something you'd say if you were trying to comfort someone whose family member was in the hospital. What it sounded like was an actual apology, actual guilt. Alex easily recognized it because it was what she was feeling as well. "Don't do that," she said, hugging Kara back to her when her sister started to pull away.

"Do what?"

"Apologize," Alex clarified. "We've been over this. None of what's happened is your fault. It's being done _to_ you, not by you."

"To _us_ ," Kara corrected, pulling back again. This time Alex let her. "And the same goes for you."

Alex tried to glance away, but Kara wouldn't let her. "No, Alex. Look, if you think for even one moment that I'm going to let you get away with blaming yourself for something you had no control over, you've got another thing coming." Kara ducked her head to catch Alex's gaze again. "Unless you _weren't_ brainwashed or hypnotized or whatever and you actually planted the bomb on purpose?"

Alex snapped her head back up in alarmed and she frowned at her sister. "No! Of course not."

"There you go then. It's not your fault, okay?" Kara squeezed Alex's hand. "Now can we both resolve to agree that this is on neither of us and place the blame on the person actually behind it?"

She was right, Alex _knew_ she was right, but it was a difficult thing, just shutting down the guilt. Even when fully knowing that it was baseless, unwarranted, guilt always seemed to hold on tight, quietly suggesting that maybe, _just maybe_ , there was still something to feel sorry for.

It was something she was just going to have to work on, she concluded. In the meantime though she could at least give her sister a little piece of mind. She took a breath and nodded. "Okay."

Kara smiled. "Good," she said before she suddenly turned her head to the side and covered her lips momentarily with her fingers, trying and failing to conceal a yawn.

It didn't go unnoticed by Alex. She poked her sister in the knee. "Go to bed," she commanded. Tomorrow was going to be a long day for both of them.

"I'm okay," the blonde countered, returning her eyes to Alex's. "You still haven't told me what your dream was about."

Not wanting to address the second statement, mostly because she didn't want to think about it, Alex skirted around it by narrowing her eyes ever so slightly and saying mildly, "Maybe it's not _you_ who needs the sleep. Maybe _I_ do."

Kara squinted at her like she was trying to decide whether Alex was telling the truth or trying to avoid any further talking, but she turned her head away before Alex could figure out which of the two Kara had decided on. She stood and for a moment Alex thought she was just going to leave, but then her sister turned to face the bed and was suddenly (and carefully) climbing over top of Alex to the other side. Kara plopped down in the empty space and curled up on her side, facing Alex.

"You do realize the guest room is right down the hall, yes?" Alex teased softly.

"Yep," Kara sleepily replied, but she didn't make a move to get off of Alex's bed again. In fact, she just inched a bit closer to Alex and snuggled further down into the pillows, closing her eyes.

Alex knew what her sister was doing; she was staying to keep Alex protected. From what —bombers or bad dreams— Alex didn't know. What she did know was that Kara had come into the room and slipped into the bed beside Alex quite a few times since the bombing, though only when she thought Alex had been asleep and wouldn't notice. Alex had noticed, every time.

Repayment, she supposed, for all the times she had done the same thing for Kara when the Kryptonian had first come to Earth. Kara had suffered a great deal of fear and sadness those first few years, but Alex had seen to it that she was with her through it all. Every nightmare, every fear-inducing experience, every fog of sorrow she'd slipped into remembering what she had lost — Alex had been there beside her, crawling into Kara's bed to keep her company, to offer support, _to protect her_.

The sisters slipped into a reflective silence, both too lost in their own heads and so mired by exhaustion to pursue any further avenue of conversation.

Alex wasn't sure how much time passed before a small shift from her sister beside her drew her attention to the side. Kara had tucked her fist under her chin, but her eyes were still shut and her breaths were deep, slow, and even. She had obviously fallen asleep.

Alex smiled softly and after a few moments of just watching the alien girl who had become both her sister and best friend, slipped very carefully out of bed and grabbed the throw blanket off of the chair she had in the corner. She moved back to Kara and gently covered her with it. Her sister had fallen asleep on top of the comforter instead of climbing underneath it and while Kara didn't actually _need_ a blanket to keep warm, Alex knew she preferred to have one, that she found being wrapped in one comforting.

Once Kara was covered to her satisfaction, Alex climbed back into bed. Her surgery site twinged at all the movement, but she ignored it, slipping under the covers and relaxing back into the pillows.

Alex was both bone-weary and overwrought, her body and mind silently warring with each other as she lay there. She _wanted_ to sleep, longed for at least the momentary relief from her inner turmoil that unconsciousness had to offer, but at the same time, feared it. Feared what she might miss while asleep, feared what could happen if she allowed her defenses to drop, and now she feared what she might see in her mind's eye.

She wasn't entirely sure what she had seen right before waking up earlier, but she remembered that the flashes had been so intense she'd been breathless and her heart had felt like it was going to explode. It hadn't been like any other dream she'd had before. It had been so fresh, so real, and some of it, the last parts, she knew _had_ been real. She had experienced them.

She wasn't unaccustomed to having dreams about distressing events she'd had in her life, but this had been something… more. It felt almost like some strange, dark truth trying to force its way into the light. She didn't want to remember it, but at the same time, something in the back of her mind was demanding that she did.

Alex stared at the shadowed ceiling above, drawing comfort and strength from the feel of Kara's soft, warm breath against her shoulder, and decided she couldn't let fear rule her, if not for her own sake then for Kara's. They would never figure out who was behind the bombing if she couldn't move past the fear. She was at the center of the whole thing and she held answers, even if she didn't know what they were yet. She couldn't simply hide away and ignore it.

When Kara had been feeling guilty about Alex having to kill Dr. Morrow on her behalf (even though it hadn't just been for her), Alex had told her sister that for her she'd do anything and she had meant it. She would do this, she vehemently concluded, and whatever else it took to find the animal who had tried to kill her sister.

With a steeling breath, Alex tentatively attempted to pull the memories of the dream back to the forefront of her mind. Her head heated with a low, throbbing ache as she tried, making her wince… and nothing came.

She frowned and tried harder.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC, of course! This one ended up kind of just being a filler chapter, but it was still something that I felt needed to be in there. I needed to see Kara's reaction to the news about the footage and explore a little more of their mutual guilt (silly girls) instead of just jumping ahead to the action of the story.
> 
> That said, things should be picking up the pace soon! *evil grin*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came to be a little quicker than the last one did, thank goodness! Here's hoping the next one can happen just as fast (though I make no promises that it will). Thank you all again for all the love!

The night had passed far too quickly, Alex had decided the moment she'd woken up. She'd tried until she couldn't think straight anymore to remember what she had seen in her dream, but all that had done was given her a migraine, and less than two and a half hours after she'd finally allowed herself to sleep, her alarm had gone off. She had not been pleased.

Returning to work hadn't been as easy as Alex had been hoping for either and she was at the point now where if one more person asked how she was feeling or made any comment about how she looked "a whole lot less blown up" (Dr. Hernandez's extremely professional medical opinion), she was going to quite possibly plant another bomb… on someone's person.

She'd finally slipped from the control room (mostly to avoid any further pointed, 'You look like you're going to fall over' looks from J'onn) and into the forensics lab in hopes of getting some work done without anyone staring at her. Also, it meant she could sit down and she was absolutely okay with that at this point… not that she would admit it to anyone.

She stretched her leg out in front of her and distractedly rubbed her abused knee, trying to chase the throbbing away, all while keeping her focus on the three computer monitors in front of her. One had the forensic reports from both the bomb fragments and from the rest of the apartment; another had the files for the many different possible suspects; and the third had the security footage of her playing on a loop. There were other computers around her working on other things as well, but for the moment, she was only paying attention to these three.

Alex tried to focus on the first two monitors, but her attention continued to get drawn back to the footage over and over until she finally gave up on the other information and just watched it. She was so engrossed she didn't even hear the footsteps approach from behind her.

"I come bearing gifts."

Alex started slightly at the very familiar (though unexpected) sound of her sister's voice, but she played it off as coolly as she could. "Gifts?" she questioned as she turned slightly in the swivel chair to look at Kara.

"Mmmhmm. Food."

Alex's chestnut eyes tracked down Kara's arm and realized her sister was carrying a takeout bag in her hand.

"Sushi!" Kara announced, "From our favorite place."

Alex sighed softly. She appreciated the effort, but she really wasn't feeling up to eating much. "Kara, I'm not really in the mood—"

"I also got you fries from In-N-Out, in case you just wanted something to munch on instead of an actual meal."

That piqued Alex's interest. She raised an eyebrow. "Animal style?"

"Animal style."

Alex held out her hands and Kara grinned, handing her a second, smaller bag. She then pulled up an extra chair and sat down next to Alex.

The two munched and Kara kept quiet, seemingly sensing that Alex wasn't really up for much chatting. That or she was just too preoccupied with shoving both her sushi and Alex's in her mouth to be much of a conversationalist.

There had been a time, albeit extremely brief, when the two sisters had considered going on the road as a professional eater and her manager, Kara being the former and Alex the latter, naturally. The plan was to establish Kara in the competition circuit as soon as they were out of highschool and then they would use her food-eating stardom to travel the world. They'd had many odd ideas as teenagers and amazingly this one hadn't been the oddest. Not long after this plot had been hatched, however, Kara had fallen in love (or thought she had) with a boy from school and had told Alex that he didn't want to travel and that she just couldn't leave him. Alex had begrudgingly shrugged, clearly disappointed, and had said she wanted to be a scientist anyway.

The only other time the idea had been brought up had been a week or so after Kara had gone to work for Cat Grant and she'd had a particularly harrowing day of "getting absolutely _everything_ wrong", the first day (of many) she'd been sure she was going to get fired.

_"I've changed my mind," Kara announced upon collapsing on Alex's couch and shoving her face into the pillows, "I'm going to become a competitive eater because_ anything _would be better than this."_

_"Free food, always a plus," Alex replied, poking Kara in the thigh until the girl flipped over onto her back and lifted her legs so Alex could sit on the couch as well. Once seated, Alex pulled Kara's legs down into her lap and patted her knee. "But isn't it all like… hot dogs? I mean, there are chicken wings and pies and whatever else, but I'm still pretty sure it's_ mostly _hot dogs."_

_Kara grimaced._

_Alex bit back a smirk. She knew full well that Kara had never been fond of the classic street food. She decided to add on, "Lots and_ lots _of hot dogs," just for a bit more emphasis._

_"Nevermind..."_

The thought of consuming thousands of hot dogs had been the breaking point and turned Kara back on the path to becoming an assistant extraordinaire (and eventually Supergirl). It had never been spoken of again.

The fries were fantastic as usual. Not exactly a health food and the fat content certainly wouldn't aid with mental efficiency, but it was still tasty. They were one of Alex's comfort foods as well, which Kara knew. It was undoubtedly why she'd gotten them for Alex in the first place. That or she was trying to fatten her up. Either was possible, Alex decided.

The silence didn't last as the sushi was quite quickly devoured. Or perhaps it only seemed like a short period of time as Alex had gotten distracted by the computer screens again.

"You're frowning."

Alex blinked and looked over at her sibling, not having realized her attention had gotten drawn back to what she'd been working on prior to Kara's arrival or that she'd stopped eating, her fries sitting half-finished in her hands. "Huh?"

"Frowning?" Kara made a circular motion around her face with her finger. "All over. Why?"

"Oh. I was just... thinking."

"About?" she prodded.

Alex blew out a slow breath and after placing her fries beside the keyboard, angled the one monitor with the security footage so that her sister could see it.

Kara sighed. "Alex, why are you watching—"

"I'm not watching it to punish myself, Kara," she cut in, though she still didn't feel completely absolved of what she'd done, brainwashed or not. "I'm just… What do you see when you watch this?"

Kara just stared at Alex for a few long moments as if she were trying to decide if Alex was telling the truth, that watching the footage over and over again wasn't some form of self-torture. Alex thought to try to reassure her, but before she could, her sister seemed to come to a decision (what it was, Alex wasn't sure) and finally she brought her eyes around to the screen.

A small frown creased her brow as she watched it again. "I see you… taking presents out of your car." She squinted her eyes slightly. "You seem a bit… stiff, like you do sometimes when you come back from the gym."

Alex's own brow furrowed for a moment as the video looped again and she watched for what Kara was talking about. Her sister was right, her movements did look stiff. Like she was sore or… fighting it? She hadn't noticed before because she'd been so focused on the package. She hadn't truly been looking at herself.

When she looked back up, she saw Kara staring at her again. "What?"

"That wasn't the answer you were looking for, was it? That's not why you asked."

"No," Alex replied.

"What were you looking for then? What do _you_ see?"

"Me holding the package."

"Right, but we've been over this, you weren't yourself."

"No, I know that. That's not what I mean," Alex said, "What I mean is that I see myself touching the _outside_ of the package."

A glimmer of understanding lit up Kara's face, then it immediately darkened into a frown. "So what you're saying is—"

"—Is if all I did was take it out of my car and bring it into your apartment, how did my prints and DNA get on the actual bomb casing?"

There was a long beat of silence where the sisters just stared at one another before Kara forcibly shook her head. "No."

"Kara—"

" _No_ , Alex."

Alex frowned, frustrated. "Someone could have planted my prints and DNA, sure, but why would they bother? They got me to bring the damn thing right into your apartment, so why not—"

"What?" Kara cut in again, a rising tide of righteous anger coloring her cheeks. "Tell them about kryptonite? Get you to help _build_ the bomb? Alex, you wouldn't do that!"

"I wouldn't put one under my sister's Christmas tree either, Kara, but _I did_!"

"Alex—" Kara suddenly stopped short and brought her fingers up to the earbud she had in. "Winn, now is not a good time," she said, clearly wrestling with trying to make her voice sound normal.

Alex watched as Kara's jaw clenched and her gaze dropped to the floor for a beat, looking almost as if she were considering using her heat vision to carve very _colorful_ words into the concrete.

"Alright, I'm on my way," the blonde said, resigned, before looking back up at Alex. "I gotta go. Out of control factory fire."

"Be careful," Alex sighed. She didn't usually voice the caution, always just thought it, but ever since the bombing she'd found herself saying it more. If there was anything the incident had shown her, it was that anything could happen and they both needed to be on guard.

Tilting her head slightly to the side, Kara's expression softened and the corners of her lips upturned just a bit. "I will," she promised. "But no driving any guilt nails into your coffin before I get back, understand?"

"No," Alex said dryly. "Guilt nails? What does that even mean?"

"It means this conversation isn't over and you aren't to do anything stupid while I'm gone," Kara replied as she climbed back to her feet and headed toward the door.

"What am I gonna do?" Alex crossed her arms and leaned back in the chair as she watched her sister go. "Hank won't even let me do any work that requires me to stand for more than twenty minutes. It's not like I'm gonna grab a gun and go on a solo manhunt."

"You never know. With you, anything's possible," Kara teased and then she was out the door.

The innocuous statement left Alex suddenly breathless, not because she thought her sister meant anything malicious by it, but because it was echoing through her skull like a scorching battering ram, only it wasn't in Kara's voice, but instead someone else's, someone… almost… familiar.

_Anything's possible. Anything's possible._

_Anything._

_With you…_

_..._

_I have a feeling, Agent Danvers, that with you, anything's possible._

The searing pain ripped down her spine from her head and seized her lungs, stealing her voice. Her vision danced with both pinpoints of light, far too bright, and creeping shadows around the edges. Gripping her head, she stumbled up from the chair, trying to go for the door, trying to find help, but she didn't even make it two steps before her legs gave out.

She lie writhing on the floor, flashes of images, sounds, words burning through her mind, until finally, mercifully, the darkness around her vision swallowed her whole.

* * *

"Alex?"

She heard the voice, distant and concerned.

...And then suddenly demanding.

" _Alex_."

She knew that tone. It was the one he used right before grilling her. Alex's eyes snapped open and she instantly regretted it, the bite of the overhead lights sending spikes of electricity down her optic nerve and into her aching head. "Ugh." She covered her eyes with her hand to shield them from further abuse. "What happened?" she asked, her voice sounding unpleasantly rough to her ears.

"You had some sort of episode," J'onn replied, sounding none too pleased about the fact. "I found you on the floor."

She frowned and slowly inched her hand back down, cracking her eyes. The director had moved into the path of light, blocking it as he loomed over her. It made it easier to deal with.

It was at that moment that she also realized she was still on the floor, the concrete cool and far too hard against her spine and the back of her skull. "How long was I out?"

He shook his head. "No more than five minutes," he told her. She supposed that explained why he was the only person there and why she was apparently still lying where she had dropped. "I felt your mind become distressed," he continued, his voice dropping just a bit as if he were afraid someone might overhear, "and when I arrived, you were unconscious."

Frowning again, she slowly started pushing herself off of the cold floor and into a sitting position. J'onn rushed to her aid, his hand instantly coming up behind her shoulder to guide her. "Easy," he cautioned.

She cocked an eyebrow. "Felt it? So you're just reading my mind all the time now?"

"I was monitoring you as I do everyone, but being mentally open is not the same as actively using telepathy," he monotoned. "I simply _sensed_ the distress. I wasn't in your mind to know what caused it."

Her head swirled for a moment once she was upright and felt hot and throbby, similar to the headache felt when overexerting oneself while dehydrated. She eyed the computer chair a few feet away, silently debating whether or not she could make it over to it.

J'onn's gaze followed her eyeline and he offered her a hand while keeping the other pressed supportively against the back of her shoulder. He pulled her to her feet.

"We should get Hernandez to check you out," he told her as he assisted her the few steps across the room. "Make sure you didn't hit your head."

She shook her head. "No, Sir, I'm okay." She wasn't actually okay, far from it, but she didn't think there was any added _physical_ damage done.

He helped her into the chair before sitting in the one Kara had been in before, leaning forward a little as he studied her face. "Do you remember what happened right before you lost consciousness?"

"Kara was here. She brought food. We were talking… and then she got a call about a factory fire…" She looked off to the side, brow furrowing, as she tried to recall what had—

She snapped her eyes back to J'onn's. "I remembered something."

"Remembered what?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but then realized there was something amiss. "I… don't know," she said, frown once again darkening her features. "Something. It was just there. It was just…" Her mind was blank though. She remembered the _feeling_ of remembering something, but couldn't actually remember what the something was. She pressed a frustrated hand to her forehead and glared at the floor. "It's gone. It was just there and now it's gone!"

"I believe you," he told her.

She sat there in an angry, discomfited silence for a good minute or so, trying to force herself to remember, but all she managed to do was again turn the ache into a migraine. She didn't understand. She knew the memories were there. She had felt them, knew she had seen them. How could they just completely disappear again and why was it that she couldn't draw even the smallest part of them out?

A thought suddenly struck her. She may not be able to coax out the memories, but maybe...

She looked back up at J'onn. "You need to do it again."

He raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"

"Go in my head. Mind meld. Whatever. You need to do it again, but you need to look deeper."

"I'm not a Vulcan, Alex," he said mildly.

She ignored him. "The memories are there, Sir," she pressed. "I _felt_ them. I remember… remembering them, but now they're—" She shook her head and made a 'Poof' gesture with her hands. "You need to go in and draw them out. Even if _I_ don't remember after you do, _you_ will."

"No."

She sat a little straighter, taken aback. "Sir, it's extremely likely that what I can't remember is exactly what we need to find out who tried to kill my sister."

"I'm sorry, Alex," he said, "but digging around in your head, trying force out memories that are clearly trying to remain hidden?" He shook his head. "I could cause serious damage."

"I'm willing to take the risk," she tried, her tone bordering on desperate. She needed to protect her sister, but she couldn't do that if she didn't know who or what she was protecting her from. She _needed_ J'onn to do this.

"I'm not." His tone brokered no argument and Alex felt her heart drop. "But what I do think we need to do is get a closer look at your brain," he continued. "We'll talk to Hernandez. CT, MRI, PET scan — all of it. Kryptonian imager if we have to, whatever it takes. There could be information there that could help us figure this out."

This was not what Alex wanted to hear. The answers they needed were just barely beyond her reach, but still _right there_. Her inability to do anything about it, her _helplessness_ , frustrated her and made her so angry. She wanted to blame it on J'onn, blame him for not just doing as she asked, because... well, it was easier than facing her own inadequacies, but when she looked at him, looked past the dry personality and stoic expression, she saw his fear. He hid it well, but she had known him long enough now that if she took a moment to truly _look_ at him, she could see beneath his walls. He was scared —for her, of himself, she wasn't sure— and that gave her pause, that made her not push. She just couldn't do that to him.

Sighing, Alex gave a reluctant nod. "Yes, Sir," she replied, unable to keep the disappointment out of her tone.

She spotted a very brief flicker of guilt pass over his face as he returned the nod and looked away. She frowned slightly. _More guilt_. The sneaky, cloying emotion seemed to be the ruling one amongst all of them these days. She wondered when, _if_ , that would change. "Let's get this done."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! I quite literally don't know where half of this chapter came from, like WTH. Clearly I was stuck in some strange swirling void of hunger and randomness when I was writing it. ...I really, really want some In-N-Out fries now... but I live across the country from them. *le sigh*
> 
> This week's episode of Supergirl really threw a wrench in my brain for a bit and I struggled to write until I reminded myself that this story is AU and it doesn't have to follow completely with the show. I DO WHAT I WANT. You guys seem to enjoy it anyway and that's all that matters. :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *struts around* You wanted the next chapter fast, yes? You're welcome. :D

It wasn't working. Alex popped an eye open and glared at the man on the television. She swore if he said, "And breathe," one more time, she was going to put a bullet through the screen.

"And we're going to push away all negativity," he droned, "leaving behind a calm, open, receptive mind."

She growled. Her head was killing her and no amount of Advil could even seem to touch it. And _this_ —she aimed the remote at the TV— this was not helping.

"Aaand breathe."

She switched it off.

The sound of the door being unlocked drew her attention and in an instant her headache began to ease. She knew who it was before she even came into view.

"Whoa," Kara said before even shutting the door. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing," Alex was quick to reply, though it was weak because clearly _something_ was going on and there was nothing she could do that would hide the fact.

Kara moved across the room to the black Bose stereo and picked up the CD case on top, reading the cover aloud. "'Mountain Refuge: Sounds of Peace' — Take a relaxing journey deep into the Himalayan Mountains and discover your inner Zen."

"Aren't you supposed to be rescuing people?" Deflection. Deflection was her friend.

"I'm on call." Kara looked around, expression growing more and more amusedly incredulous. "Incense, candles, background chanting… Are those crystals?"

Deflection was useless in this situation. "I thought I'd cover all my bases..."

"What exactly are you doing?"

Alex huffed in annoyance. "Meditating. And you're interrupting."

Kara held her hands up in surrender, clearly trying to fight back her smile. She was losing. "New regimen? Punching people and working out not enough to relax you anymore?"

"No," Alex said, rolling her eyes, "I'm trying to remember."

"Oh." Kara put the CD case back down. "How's that working out for you?"

Alex grumbled and blew out the candles in front of her, eliciting a silent "Ah"-and-nod from Kara.

"Too bad we don't know any telepaths," Kara said offhandedly, dropping down onto the couch. "Or at least any who aren't members of the Fort Rozz community."

"They probably wouldn't want to go digging around my head anyway," Alex mumbled irritably. She was really going to have to talk with J'onn again about informing Kara of his true identity because this was just getting ridiculous.

Kara pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Mmm, true. God only knows what terrifying stuff they'd find in there."

Alex threw a crystal at her, eliciting a squawk of protest from her sister. "Not helping."

"Wow, someone is grumpy tonight," Kara said, tossing the assaulting crystal onto the coffee table. She didn't sound particularly upset though.

"I'm not," Alex objected, deflating. "I'm just…"

"Grumpy?"

Alex narrowed her eyes at her sister. "Tired," she corrected, "and frustrated."

Kara's expression softened and she patted the empty spot next to her on the couch. Alex sighed and pushed herself out of the half lotus position she was in (as her one knee was nowhere near ready to be bending in such a manner) and off of the floor. She dropped down beside Kara and slumped dejectedly.

"Have you thought about going to see a hypnotherapist?"

"Yes," Alex admitted, an answer she found surprising coming out of her mouth despite the fact that it was something she already knew. She was a scientist and a highly trained government agent — she generally didn't do the whole spiritual or mystical thing. "But it's not like we have one on the DEO payroll and if I'm honest, the idea of letting someone mess with my head, put me under... potentially take control of me again, it, uh,..."

"Scares you?"

Alex frowned down at her hands and nodded. "Yeah." She sunk a little further into the couch and let herself list to the side, resting her head against her sister's shoulder. She would allow herself this moment, she decided, this moment to just _be_ with Kara and to accept the comfort her little sister so freely offered.

It was only for a moment, however, and then she blew out a long, low breath and said, "It's not as if it would work anyway."

"How come?" Kara asked softly.

"Because of this." Alex straightened back up and leaned gingerly forward, grabbing her phone off of the coffee table. She pressed her thumb to the fingerprint scanner, unlocking it, and pulled up the file she needed. It was easier than going to get her laptop to show Kara.

"Here," she said as she handed Kara her phone.

Kara took it and flipped slowly through the images there. "What am I looking at?" she asked.

"My brain."

The younger sister frowned slightly and glanced at Alex. "Your brain?"

Alex nodded. "Yeah, Hank ordered scans done, though I probably would have requested them regardless."

"Okay…" There was trepidation in Kara's voice, almost like she was afraid to know whatever it was that Alex was about to tell her.

Leaning over a little, Alex pointed out several spots. "See here? These are all parts of the brain that deal with the creation and retention of memory."

"There are dark spots within all of them." Kara looked from the phone to Alex, eyes wide with almost childlike unease. "Are those meant to be there?"

"No," Alex replied, trying her very best to quash down her own anxiety in order to lend strength to her sister. She didn't want to scare Kara with her own fears. "It could be tissue damage or lesions or…" she shrugged slightly, "something else."

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

"Tumors?" Kara whispered the word as if afraid speaking it too loud might call it into being.

"I don't know," Alex repeated, "but I don't _think_ so. Hernandez took about half of my blood supply in order to run tests. My CBC came back normal, along with the protein and the tumor marking tests. All of it, all within normal parameters."

There was a pause where Kara just studied Alex's face. "But you think it could be a fluke?"

Alex shook her head. "I don't know, Kara. I don't know what to think at this point." She took the phone from her sister and tossed it back on the table. "All I know is that I'm sick of being in the dark about everything. I'm sick of waiting for another bomb to go off."

Kara didn't hesitate. She turned her body toward Alex and leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her. She hugged her tight, or at least what was tight to Alex, and didn't let go.

Alex sagged against her steel-skinned, soft-hearted sister and didn't let go either.

"I can't imagine how scary this must be for you," Kara murmured.

"Yes, you can," Alex gently countered. "You're right here with me."

"True, but still," Kara said, pulling back out of the hug, "it must be driving you crazy."

That was an understatement, Alex thought as she blew an amused puff of air out of her nose and gave a nod. "Maybe a bit. All of this—" She gestured around to the candles and DVD.

"—Was a way to get in touch with your inner yogi?"

Alex made a face. "I hate yoga." Kara smirked and Alex felt the tension in her shoulder loosened up just a little. She sighing softly and shook her head **.** "I just needed to do something, to _try_ something," she confessed. Having seen the shadows on her scans, she'd had very little faith that meditation would do a thing, but she'd still decided to give it a go, just in case. "All this waiting around…" She had always been the proactive sort, the one to get things done. She'd never been good with being idle. It made her twitchy and that was on a normal day. The situation they were in now was infinitely worse.

Kara nodded sympathetically. "I know." She patted Alex's forearm and fell thoughtfully silent for a moment before saying, "You know what? Let's go."

Alex cocked an eyebrow. "Go?"

"Yep, we're going out."

"Where?"

"A late movie? I don't know. Let's just do something to distract us a little while."

"Kara—"

"What? There's nothing else to be done for now and it's driving us both crazy, so let's _do_ something. Unless you'd like to go back to your meditation?"

Alex gave Kara a _look_. "I just don't know if going out is the best use of our time."

"Come on, Alex!" Kara pressed, clearly determined to get her way. "You need a break from all of this and so do I. Maybe a little distance will help us see things better."

There was a long beat of combative silence before Alex finally gave a long-suffering sigh and said, "Okay, fine."

"Yay!" Kara popped up onto her feet and offered Alex a hand, pulling her up as well. She grabbed Alex's coat and handed it to her.

"You do realize that we still have a protective detail outside, right?" Alex pointed out as she pulled on her coat.

Kara paused for only a second before she shrugged and said, "They can come, too. I'll even buy them popcorn."

* * *

It had been a long debate to determine what movie to see as Alex and Kara had been in conflicting movie moods. It wasn't until Brock, one of the guys on their protection detail, had made an offhanded comment about how he hadn't had the time to see _Star Wars: The Force Awakens_ yet that the decision had been made (despite Brock pointing out that he couldn't exactly do his job well if he was distracted by a movie). The Danvers sisters had already seen it (twice), but neither cared about that.

"I'm pretty sure Brock and Ellis think we're nerds now," Kara said, glancing back at the two men trailing behind her and Alex.

"We _are_ nerds, Kara," Alex stated. Their standing TV and movie nights with each other spoke to that. "Of course, you audibly humming along to the theme and clapping during the end credits didn't exactly help keep it on the DL."

"You just said 'DL'," Kara snorted, " _Nerd_."

Alex rolled her eyes. "Says the one snorting."

Kara stuck her tongue out at her and then grinned, laughing and looping her arm through Alex's. "I'm glad you agreed to come out. I feel better now. Do you feel better?"

Alex paused a beat to think about it, then nodded and smiled. "Yeah, I feel better." And she did. Kara had been right, she'd needed to take a little break, and this had been perfect. Kara hadn't even needed to zoom out in the middle of the evening in order to save anyone either. Always a plus.

She took in a deep breath of the cold night air and glanced up at the streetlamps, watching as the glittering flakes of snow caught in the light as they fluttered lazily toward the ground. They were only really flurries as they didn't get too many heavy snowfalls in National City, but it was still beautiful and far more peaceful than any chimes-and-chanting CD or meditation DVD. She was glad she had agreed to come out with Kara.

Alex was almost disappointed (and would have been if she hadn't been so cold) when they turned the corner and spotted her car where they had parked. It was also in that moment when she realized just how exhausted she was. She cast an errant prayer into the ether that she might actually be able to sleep tonight, preferably without any dreams.

"Hold up," Ellis called from behind as he and Brock quickened pace to meet them.

Alex frowned slightly when she noticed the way they were moving, the way they flanked either side of her and Kara and both had their hands on their still-holstered weapons. Something was wrong. "What is it?"

"Across the street, ten o'clock," Ellis replied, voice low.

She looked and immediately saw what he was talking about — three men, dark clothes, moving to intercept them. She automatically began reaching for the weapon in her purse and when she glanced at her sister, she saw Kara's eyes trained on the men and her arms at her sides, her hands in tight fists, ready.

Brock took two steps forward, placing himself between them and the approaching men. He held up a halting hand. "I'm going to need you to stop right there," he commanded calmly.

Alex watched one of the men raise his own hand and spotted something small and black within his fingers. She didn't hear his reply however because suddenly her head exploded in electric pain, her vision blooming white with the intensity of it. She clenched her teeth, a scream caught in her throat, and gripped her head.

As if in the distance, she heard Kara cry her name in alarm followed by male voices shouting.

It was too loud, too bright. Everything flashed and swirled, only glimpses, jumping. She couldn't stop it, couldn't stop it. It burned hot, soarching and consuming.

Trash in gutter.

Brick wall.

Hand on a gun.

Streak of blonde.

"Alex, what are you doing?" _Kara_. Confused.

Flare of green.

 _Thud_.

 _Pop, pop, pop!_ Gunfire.

"...Resisting it."

And then there was a blaze of white so intense that Alex lost herself in it.

* * *

Cold.

She was cold.

Alex opened her eyes and was greeted by the familiar site of falling snow caught in the light of the nearby streetlamp. She frowned, confused as to why that would be the first thing she would see and why she was looking directly up at it.

It took her only a moment to realize it was because she was on her back. On the ground. Outside.

"What…?" The croaked word echoed in the stillness.

She was confused. What had happened? Where was sh—

 _Kara_.

"Kara!" She jerked herself up into a sitting position, ignoring how her body and aching head protested at the sudden movement. Her vision phased in and out for a few seconds, shuttering and taking in the scene around her like a camera taking rapid pictures. "Kar—" The name was cut violently off by a rushing wave of nausea that had her coloring the thin blanket of white the flurries had left behind with Twizzlers and bile.

She spat and gagged a few times before sitting back and wiping her mouth a shaky hand. When she pulled it away, she noticed red there and quickly reached up again, checking her lips for the source. It took her a few seconds to realize the blood wasn't coming from her mouth, but instead her nose. She wiped it haphazardly with the sleeve of her coat before she pushed herself stiffly up onto her feet.

She staggered a few steps over to the wall where she braced herself, her previously-injured knee spiking with pain. She looked around.

And her heart stopped.

A few feet away lie two prone figures in dark clothes. "No," she whispered as she pushed off of the wall and limped over to them. She dropped down beside the first one, rolling him toward her to reveal the bloodied face of Brock. Hand still shaking, she reached forward and checked his pulse.

Nothing.

Ignoring her knee, she crawled the distance to the other, to Ellis, and found him dead as well. "Dammit!" she spat in anguish. They had been good men, good friends. Her breathing hitched as desperate, raging sadness rose up her throat.

 _Kara_ , her heart reminded.

"Kara," she whispered, turning her head away from Ellis to check the street. There were clear signs of a struggle in the snow, blood castoff, and bullet casings, but the other men were gone...

"Kara!" she shouted and the cry echoed down the quiet city streets.

A single sob slipped free before she forcibly took a breath and shoved down the uproar of emotions, locking them away in a straining box of control. There wasn't time. She let her agent training come to the forefront.

First things first. _Backup_.

Alex patted herself, trying to remember which pocket she'd slipped her phone into. She found it in the front right and pulled it out, her fingers automatically dialing.

_"Henshaw."_

"Sir, we have a situation," she said, voice rough.

_"Alex?"_

"Brock and Ellis are down." She stared at the red from Ellis mixing with the white of the snow. How had this happened?

She shivered. "And Kara is missing."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! Not as long as the last one, but I thought it was a good stopping point. Muahahaha!
> 
> Now to decide where to go from here... O_o


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy CRAP, this one took forever. *dies*

J'onn was there the moment Alex limped through the doors at the DEO, brushing off the field medic's attempts to aid her. He had sent out a team to secure the scene and bring Alex in. She noticed his scrutinizing look, but chose to ignore it in favor of getting right to work.

"Three men, trained, possibly military if their movements were any indication. If they took Kara, they must have knowledge of Kryptonians," she rattled off at a rapid fire pace. "And they had to have taken her because otherwise she would be here and Brock and Ellis probably wouldn't—"

"Alex."

She heard him, but her mind was racing and the compulsion to keep going was too much. "I should get my clothes to forensics. They didn't touch me, I don't think, but it's possible I could have trace evidence on me." She wouldn't hold her breath that anything would come of it, but she still felt it needed to be done — anything to find Kara.

"Alex," he tried again.

She started moving off in the direction of the labs, J'onn following behind. "We can't trace her phone because it was left at the scene, but we should pull surveillance footage from the area, see if we can locate their vehicle. Maybe get a plate number or track it using traffic cameras to wherever they took her."

" _Agent Danvers._ "

She blinked, coming to an abrupt halt in the middle of the corridor. She started to turn toward him, but didn't even get half through the pivot before he took her by the upper arm and maneuvered her through the closest door — one of the science labs. It was empty.

"Sit."

"Sir—" she began to protest.

" _Sit_."

She frowned and sat down on the black armless task chair at the first workstation.

"Did you let the medic take a look at you?" he asked as he grabbed the mandatory medkit kept in all of the labs.

"There wasn't need," she told him. "I'm fine."

"Are you?" His tone was verging on biting and it was at that precise moment that Alex realized he was upset. "Have you looked at yourself?"

"I…" She glanced to the side and caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the sleeping computer monitor. She looked like hell. Her hair, damp from melted snow hung in limp tangles; her mascara was smudged; there was still remnants left behind of the bloody nose she'd had, smeared just a bit across her top lip and onto her cheek. She even had a rather nasty-looking, still-bleeding scrape just above her right eyebrow.

And she was shivering, she realized. Still. The cold had seeped into her bones and despite having spent time in the warm SUV on the way back to the DEO, it seemed she hadn't shaken it yet. It was no wonder she'd been getting so many looks from everyone.

She sighed and closed her eyes for a beat. She looked like (and had been acting like) a crazy person.

"I'm sorry, Sir. I'm just—"

"I know," J'onn interrupted, though his tone had at least softened some. He'd pulled an antiseptic wipe from the kit and torn the packaging open, taking it out. He gave Alex no time to object before he began tending to the scrape.

Alex winced at the first contact, the first sting, but held herself steady after that.

"Start from the beginning," he said.

She'd told him over the phone, but it occurred to her then that she probably hadn't been in quite the right frame of mind at the time. She honestly couldn't even fully remember what she'd told him because everything after leaving the movie theater was all a bit of a jumble. "We were walking back to the car," she began, relating all the pertinent details.

There weren't too many details, however, because it wasn't long into the tale when everything went hazy. "They were moving to intercept and I… reached for my gun, and…"

"And?" He was pulling out Steri-Strips now. Perhaps not a scrape then, but rather an actual cut.

She frowned. "I… don't remember." She brought her eyes up to meet his. "I don't remember," she repeated, tone turning from confused to self-contemptuous. "They were coming and my hand was in my purse. Kara was beside me, Brock in front. And-and…"

She went to shake her head, but her movement was restricted by the hand J'onn had against her forehead as he placed the butterfly closures. "Why can't I remember? It _just_ happened." J'onn opened his mouth and she swore if he said something annoyingly sage like "Memory is a fickle thing" she was going to do… well, she didn't know what, but _something_. Kara was missing and she just couldn't handle it right now. She didn't need quotes to crochet on a pillow. She needed to find her sister.

"Try something small," he suggested.

She blinked up at him. "What?"

"You're too focused on the big picture," he told her as he crossed the room to the small sink in the corner and grabbed a paper towel, wetting it. He brought it back over and handed it to her, motioning to her nose.

Alex ducked her head slightly to wipe the remainder of blood away.

"There could be details you saw, but are ignoring because your focus is too broad," J'onn said as he pulled up a second chair and sat in front of her. "Think small. The wind against your face. The sound of traffic in the distance. The way the ground felt beneath your feet. Close your eyes and think about these things. What did you see? What do you _feel_?"

The desire to protest was strong, to point out that this was a waste of very precious time, but J'onn seemed to expect that reaction because he gave a trenchant raise of an eyebrow and a pointed look. She blew out a breath and reluctantly closed her eyes. She thought back, focusing on the small things. "My feet were cold," she said after a moment. "I hadn't expected to be outside that long so I'd worn the wrong shoes, but Kara thought the snow was pretty so we took the roundabout way to the car."

"What did you think about the snow?" J'onn quietly asked, guiding her through her thoughts.

Alex saw the glimmering flakes falling in her mind's eye. "I thought it was peaceful," she replied. "The street was empty and what traffic I did hear was several blocks down."

"But the street wasn't actually empty, was it?"

She frowned slightly, memory snapping to the image of the three men crossing the street toward her and the others. "No, the men were there."

"What were they wearing?"

"Black."

"Black what?"

"Black… everything. Boots, pants, coats, glov—" She stopped short.

"What is it?" J'onn questioned.

Alex opened her eyes and looked at him. "Two of them were wearing gloves, but the third," she shook her head, "he wasn't."

"Why is this significant?"

"Because he had something in his hand."

"What?"

She shook her head again, frowning. "I'm not sure. Something small, maybe a remote?"

"Remote to what?"

"I don't know, but he pointed it at us and then... " She frowned and closed her eyes, a flare of pain igniting at her temples. "My head — it burned and… nothing. I can't remember." Tears of frustration rushed her eyes without permission.

J'onn opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, there was a knock at the door. It was one of the agents who had been on the retrieval team.

"I'm sorry for interrupting, but—"

"It's fine, Adler," Alex replied, spying the report in the other woman's hand. "What is it?"

Adler held up the file. "The sample you wanted analyzed first, Agent Danvers? It's confirmed to be Kryptonian."

A freezing jolt shot down Alex's spine and she suddenly felt like she couldn't breathe.

"Sample?" J'onn questioned, rising from the chair to take the report from her hand. He flipped it open and scanned the results. "Of?"

"Blood, Sir."

 _Oh God, oh God_ kept repeating over and over in Alex's head. J'onn seemed to easily pick up on her disquiet because he nodded to the other agent and said, "Thank you, Adler," effectively dismissing her.

When Adler was gone, he turned back to Alex and studied her with a concerned gaze.

Alex swallowed hard at the rising distress. "She was bleeding." She looked down at the paper towel she was twisting in her hands. She had already seen far too much of Kara's blood recently. It had been terrifying and more than enough to give her nightmares, but to think that someone had injured her sister and then taken her to do God only knows what to… Alex didn't even know how to process that, how to _deal_ with that.

J'onn shifted his weight, placing the report on the workstation beside him. The slight sound of the folder slipping against the table drew Alex's attention back up.

"My sister is missing, Sir," she whispered. "She's hurt and she's missing and I can't _remember_." Alex's breath hitched in her throat and she had to take a moment to get a hold of herself before she said, "I need you to go in my head and find out what I can't."

"Alex—"

She immediately cut him off, saying, "I don't care what it does to me. The answers are here, in my head." A tear slipped unchecked down her cheek. She just didn't have the strength to keep up any unaffected front any longer. "Sir, I will live as a vegetable if it means my sister is okay," she said, earnest and desperate. "Please, Hank— _J'onn_. Please. She's my _family_."

She saw the conflict on his face, no doubt the promise he'd made with her father to protect her warring with the memory of his wife and daughters. She knew beyond a shadow that he would have done anything to save them just as she was willing to do anything to save Kara. They were both protectors and that was precisely why she had said what she had. He had failed at his duties, or at least that is how she was sure he saw it, and she knew he would wish that burdensome guilt on no one else.

And she saw it. Accompanied by with a tide of rising anger at her clear manipulation, she saw the moment he gave in.

"The very second I sense something going wrong..." he started to warn, tone sharp.

The relief that washed over her was so profound that she felt slightly faint. She nodded quickly. "I understand."

J'onn looked like he wanted to growl, but instead he stalked back over to the door and shut it. He stayed there for a minute, hand pressed against the glass, head down. Alex thought that he looked like he was gathering his strength and perhaps he was, because the next moment, he lifted his head, straightened his shoulders, and crossed back over to her, sitting in the chair he had vacated when Adler had walked in.

He wasn't pleased, that much was clear, but he didn't look as angry now, just resigned. He reached over and placed both hands on either side of her head.

"I thought you said you weren't a Vulcan," she teased weakly, hoping to alleviate some of the strain in the air.

He said nothing for a beat and she thought perhaps the joke hadn't been the best play in such a tense situation, but then he spoke, deadpanning a perfect, "My mind to your mind."

She bit back a smile.

"I need you to think back," J'onn said, closing his eyes.

Alex's mind immediately went to Christmas Eve, the terrifying images never far from the forefront. The box, the explosion, Kara's pale face.

The blood. So much blood.

"Beyond that, Alex," he instructed. "Before the explosion. To the time lost."

Alex's memories flickered back to right before.

_Shopping with Kara._

_Mom arriving for dinner._

_Grabbing a few extra essentials from the bodega across the street before it shut._

_"...Make my wish come true. All I want for Christmas is you."_

_Putting the eggnog in the fridge for later._

_Cell phone ringing._

_**Blackness** _ _._

Alex frowned, closing her eyes to concentrate on the empty space in her memories. She stared into the darkness and felt her mind begin to heat. She winced ever so slightly.

Almost as if in the distance, she could hear her watch ticking and with each passing second, the torridity of the inky mass concealing her memories expanded outward, consuming, setting nerves ablaze.

_Tick, tick._

_Tick, tick._

It grew. It burned.

_Tick, tick._

_Tick, tick._

_Tick_ —

"I see nothing," J'onn suddenly said, dropping his hands.

Alex opened her eyes and realized she was shaking, sweat leaving slick trails under her hair and down her neck. She took a breath and shook her head. "Try again," she said.

"Alex—"

" _Please_."

"I told you if I even began to sense something wrong—"

"I'm okay."

"I could feel your pain," he countered. "That is not 'okay'."

"I can handle it _._ " J'onn met her desperate gaze and just held it for a long minute, his return to his previous internal debate clear in his eyes. She balled up her hands tight to keep them from trembling and blew out a controlled breath before repeating in a quieter, more assured manner, " _I can handle it._ "

The muscles of J'onn's jaw rippled as he clenched his teeth, but then he gave a sharp nod and reached forward again.

Alex took another breath and closed her eyes.

The burning ignited anew, but there was something... different this time, a pressure to the heat. A presence.

_J'onn._

She hadn't noticed him before, not even a whisper, but now he was all over. It was a strange sensation and she might have found him a comfort had his presence not felt so very much like an invasion. She trusted him, of course, but it was as if her mind knew that he wasn't meant to be there, especially not in such an overwhelming way.

 _"Focus, Alex,"_ his voice reverberated, not aloud but in her head. _"Focus on the gaps, on the shadows."_

She tried, but now the heat was spiking down her spine in searing waves. The weight of his probing mind, the pressure, was also growing and she could distantly feel herself physically reacting to the intrusion. The scream of her muscles as she tensed to the point of snapping, the bite of her nails as her clenched hands pushed them into the flesh of her palms…

The excruciating pop in her sinuses and the rush of warmth that gushed over her lips and down her chin.

_Smell of fish and damp._

_Beeping blue sedan._

_Anxiety. Late._

_Pink and orange over the bay._

_Leigh and Benoist._

_Sheet metal._

_8288_

_Abandoned._

_Not late. "Right on time."_

_Dizzy._

_**Burning** _ _._

"Alex!" She felt herself listing forward, but firm hands caught her shoulders and held her still. "Alex, talk to me."

It took her a few moments to realize that the weight of J'onn was no longer in her head and that he was actually talking to her before she dragged open her eyes. She blinked at the blurriness in her vision and waiting for her head to stop swirling before she finally tried to focus on his face. She frowned at the hint of panic in his gaze. She'd scared him and while she did feel a measure of guilt over that, she was far more relieved than anything else. He'd somehow managed to break through the barrier, at least somewhat.

"You did it," she whispered, then she cringed when she tasted blood. She pressed her fingers to her lips and realized it was all over the place — her nose, down her chin, on the front of the navy blue blouse she'd worn out to the movies with Kara.

J'onn didn't looked pleased at all by the crimson result of the mental inquisition. He rose to his feet and slowly pulled his hands away, seemingly checking to be sure Alex wasn't going to topple over before he went to grab her more paper towel. "I saw only glimpses," he told her as he crossed back to her. "A jumble of unsequenced flashes."

Alex took the paper towel from his outstretched hand and pressed it to her still-bleeding nose, pinching it in an attempt to stem the flow. "Yes, but it's still something," she replied, voice muffled. " _And_ I remember it. The memories didn't just… slip back into the abyss once you left my head."

He gave a nod. "Good," he replied, though he still didn't sound like he was glad he'd done it. "Perhaps you can provide more context."

"Maybe." She'd seen what she assumed he'd seen. She wasn't sure how much more context she could add to it at the moment. Still, she would try.

"At the very least we have a starting point," J'onn continued. "The bay."

* * *

After cleaning up, Alex had changed out of what she'd worn to the movies and into one of the extra sets of her standard DEO attire that she had in her locker. Her head was still thrumming after what she and J'onn had done and it was only now, as she made her way toward the control room, that she realized how very unhappy her previously-injured knee was again. She did her best not to limp, however. She wanted to avoid any excuse for J'onn to sideline her.

"Anything, Vasquez?" she asked the technician as she came up behind her.

Agent Vasquez glanced at Alex over her shoulder and then clicked a few keys on the keyboard in front of her, pulling up a map on one of the forward screens. "Director Henshaw said you remembered two different names in possible correlation to the bay area," the tech began, motioning to the blinking dot on the map. "That right there is the intersection of Leigh and Benoist. Old warehouse district, two blocks from the east port."

Alex felt a surge of anxious anticipation flare up inside her. They needed to go check it out immediately. "Where's Henshaw?" she asked, but before Vasquez could reply, the sound of multiple sets of combat boots tramping against concrete echoed through the open room. She turned just in time to see J'onn, as well as a fully geared TAC team, walk into the room.

"Sir," she said, striding purposefully over to him, "where are—"

"Before you say anything more, Agent Danvers, the answer is 'no'. You're not coming."

Her eyes widened. She should have known just by the way he'd earlier suggested ( _three_ times) that she let Hernandez check her out that he was going to pull something like this. She understood his concern, she really did, but if he thought she was just going to wait around...

Her alarm lasted for just a beat though before she set her shoulders and raised her chin determinedly. "With all due respect, Sir, yes, I am. Supergirl is in this mess because of me and I'm going to help make it right," she told him, using her sister's alter ego as a way to show detachment to the other agents. No one wanted the sister of the victim on the op, not when she brought with her the chance of letting her attachment compromise the team in the field. "I'm going to be there when we bring her home."

"Agent Danvers—"

"Besides," she continued, not wanting to let him get another word in, "coming along might jog some memories and if she isn't at the location we're going to, maybe being there will help me remember where she _will_ be." She met his gaze and did not falter.

Either he was reading her mind or he just knew her that well, because he seemed to pick up on the 'If you don't let me, I'll just follow you' that she was silently projecting. He set his jaw and glared before raising a finger at her and saying, "You stay in the vehicle. Am I clear?"

She was mildly surprised he'd given in so easily. She nodded quickly so he wouldn't reconsider. Sitting in the SUV wasn't exactly what she wanted, but she would still be on site and that would do for now. "Yes, Sir."

"Go get geared."

She nodded and four minutes later, she was back in full gear. Thankfully it hadn't been a ploy to distract her while everyone left her behind (which she admittedly thought it might be) and the team was waiting for her in the garage when she reappeared. She climbed into the front passenger seat of the forward black Chevy Suburban and offered J'onn a nod of acknowledgment, of thanks, and to let him know that she was ready. It was time to get Kara back and figure out who the hell was behind it all.

* * *

"Approaching Leigh and Benoist," J'onn announced into the radio.

Alex kept her eyes out the window, searching for anything that might trigger her memory. When they reached the intersection, J'onn stopped the SUV and Alex leaned forward a little to get a better look.

"Anything?" he asked, glancing at her.

"I…" She squinted out the windshield at the street sign. It was definitely the one she'd remembered, but beyond that, nothing was coming. "...Don't know."

"Not even a direction or something?" Agent Deacon asked from the backseat.

Alex frowned. She knew he was just asking because he wanted this to be a successful mission, he wanted to bring Kara home, but it still put Alex on edge. She wanted to get Kara back more than anyone and adding pressure, no matter how unintentional, did not help.

J'onn nodded and started turning the vehicle right, but as he pulled forward, a glint of the setting sun reflecting off a metal surface drew Alex's eye and somehow she knew. "No, wait. Left."

"Alex?"

She motioned toward a construction site halfway down the block. "I'm… I'm not sure why, but I think we need to go there."

That was all it seemed J'onn needed because he swung the wheel the opposite direction it had been in and whipped the vehicle around, almost burning rubber. They drove up Leigh Street and turned onto the construction lot. The place was deserted and it looked like it had been for some time. The building, some triple story, brick monstrosity of a warehouse only seemed to be halfway done, as if the owners had run out of money right in middle of construction.

As the second SUV pulled up beside them, J'onn put their Suburban into park and turned his head to look at Alex. He didn't say a word, but she knew what he was asking. She nodded. "Yes, this is it." Everything seemed so familiar, though she had no idea why. She tried to think back, to draw out a correlating memory, but there was nothing. It was like trying to recall a dream — she couldn't quite remember anything, but she could still _feel_ it. She could feel that this was right.

"Stay in the vehicle," J'onn instructed as he opened the door and prepared to climb out.

"Sir—"

He shot her a stern look. "That was our deal," he rumbled lowly. "No arguments." He didn't give her time to even attempt to protest further before he got out of the SUV and shut the door behind him. He rounded the front where the rest of the team waited.

Alex tapped her short nails anxiously against the armrest, eyes trained out the windshield, watching everyone. The sun was just about to set. Soon there would be no light to see by, not that she would be seeing much of them anyway once they entered the building.

J'onn was giving orders, quick and succinct. Three teams, three points of entry. She couldn't actually make out his words, but she could tell by his motions what he was saying to them. The first two teams moved off, leaving only him, Deacon, and Benanti behind. He met her eyes briefly before he turned back to Deacon, saying something. There was a momentary delay, then the olive-skinned agent gave a nod and moved to the driver side door, opening it and getting in.

Alex frowned at him. "Deacon?" She glanced back out at J'onn to see him giving her one last look before he turned and headed toward the building with Benanti. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting in the car," came is dull response.

"Waiting with me, you mean," she said, a jolt of unhappy understanding shooting up her spine. "Henshaw has you babysitting."

"Your word, not mine."

The breath of irritation she released very nearly came out as a growl. She did not need a babysitter. She wasn't going to do anything stupid… probably.

"Look, I get it, Danvers," Deacon said, slipping the securing strap of his assault rifle back off over his head and put the weapon up on the dashboard. "If it were one of my family, I'd want to be on the op, too." He blinked, then squinted his eyes. "No wait, scratch that. I hate my family. But if it were someone I _cared_ about..." He nodded. "My dog even."

Alex raised an eyebrow. "You'd really put your dog before your family?"

" _Any_ day of the week."

She believed him. She opened her mouth to say something more, to tell him that he needed to be out there with the others, doing his job, finding her sister, but then her phone buzzed. She pulled it free from her belt and looked at the screen. There was a text with a video attached from Vasquez.

Without a thought, she pressed play…

...And fifteen seconds in, she couldn't breathe.

It was video surveillance footage from the corner ATM across the street from where the three men had taken Kara. It was grainy and choppy, but it showed a clear progression of what had happened. The men were out of the frame, but she, Kara, Ellis, and Brock weren't.

Alex saw the moment they realized the men were moving toward them, watched Brock step forward.

She saw the moment when her head had ignited with pain.

Brock and Ellis had pulled their weapons and were pointing them at the men while casting quick, furtive glances back at her, no doubt trying to figure out what was going on. Kara was holding onto Alex's shoulders, keeping her upright.

The moment, though, the one that made both no sense and every bit of sense came in the next few seconds after.

 _"Alex, what are you doing?"_ her memory rang with Kara's confused voice.

Alex watched herself, seemingly of her own will, pull her service weapon out of her purse and aim.

Only she wasn't aiming at the men. She was aiming at Brock and Ellis.

And she pulled the trigger.

Ellis was closer; he went down first, a shot to the chest. Brock tried to move and it took three bullets to take him down. Kara's reaction was delayed, no doubt unable to comprehend what was happening, but after the fourth shot, she knocked the gun from Alex's hand with enough force that it sent Alex spiraling to the ground as well.

It was when her attention was on Alex, however, that the men moved in on Kara. Alex didn't know what they had used because they were still off camera, but Kara was hit from behind by something that glowed and she went down hard, writhing in pain on the pavement for a few nauseating seconds before falling still.

That was when they took her. A van pulled up and the men hauled Kara inside before speeding off, leaving Alex lying in the snow.

"Holy shit."

Alex's eyes snapped up from the video at the sound of Deacon's voice and she dropped her hand, which at some point had come up to cover her mouth in alarm. The expression on Deacon's face was indecipherable and her stomach dropped. He must have thought—

Before she could finish what she was thinking or say a word, movement out the front caught her eye and she turned her head to see J'onn approaching the SUV, face stony, phone in his hand. He had gotten the text as well.

She went to reach for the handle on the door, to get out, to explain that she didn't know what had happened, that she had no memory of any of what they'd just seen, but suddenly a piercing, high-pitched tone sliced through her head and her vision flashed white.

"Danvers?"

Everything was like a nightmare. She was suddenly doing and saying things, but she had no control over herself.

"Don't," she snapped at Deacon when he reached for the assault rifle on the dash. She'd pulled out her sidearm and was pointing it at him. "Out the window. _Now_."

She watched as the agent open the window and slowly tossed the rifle out. "Sidearm and knife," was her next forced command. Deacon did as she said.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that J'onn now had his rifle up and was pointing it in her direction. He was yelling at her, telling her to stand down, but she couldn't, no matter how much she wanted to. She was no longer in control of herself.

Alex opened her own window and in a quick movement, snatched one of the two flashbangs off of Deacon's vest, tossing it outside, pin still in. She grabbed the second and held it in her hand. "Drive."

"Agent Danvers—" he tried.

"Drive!"

Spitting out a curse, Deacon threw the Suburban into reverse and hit the gas.

As they passed the back end of the other SUV, Alex whipped her arm around and with unmatched, almost robotic-like precision, fired her weapon multiple times, puncturing the gas tank of the second vehicle. In the same breath, she pulled the pin of the second flashbang with her teeth and tossed it beneath the SUV into the spilling gasoline. The vehicle went up in an impressive ball of flames a moment later and Alex had the gun back on Deacon before he could even fully process what had just occurred.

Confused and terrified, Alex watched through her own eyes as all of this happened. She didn't understand. How was it possible that she wasn't in control of her own body?

"What the hell are you doing, Danvers?" Deacon growled, understandably ticked. "Where are we going?"

"Just drive," she heard herself hiss.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! I won't lie to you, writing this chapter was like pulling teeth, only there were no drugs to make it slightly better. It was rough and slow and if I'm honest with you, this was my least favorite chapter so far. I think a big part of it had to do with the fact that Kara wasn't in it at all and also that if felt like all I was trying to do was impart all this really dry information.
> 
> THAT SAID, it is done. It is up. I hope you all made it through without being bored to death! Thank you all for being so patient with me. Now, onward to the more interesting stuff!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *breathes* Ah, yes, this one felt much better to write!

Alex was surprised and disturbed when she came to as she hadn't even realized she'd passed out. What was far more alarming though than having lost time was the location in which she had just woken up in — she had no clue where she was.

As she dragged her eyes open, she was immediately greeted by a white wall, pristine and shiny, and the too-loud buzz of fluorescent lighting above. The combination of the two, the light off of the wall, made her eyes hurt and she had to close them again.

She rolled over, the surface beneath her hard against her spine. _Ugh_.

A sound of soft footfalls clicked on approach and male voice came out of nowhere.

"Ah. Welcome back, Agent Danvers."

Alex immediately realized she had no idea who was speaking to her. She snapped her eyes open and yanked herself up into a sitting position. Her head immediately reeled at the abrupt movements and she had to brace herself to keep from swaying.

"Steady."

She breathed through the vertigo, squinting her eyes until they focused on the source. It was rather unassuming-looking middle-aged man with dark hair that was just beginning to grey. His eyes were a cutting blue and something about the way he was studying her, his gaze icy and analytical, made her strangely uncomfortable.

"Who are you?" she rasped. Her throat was so dry.

He made a "hmm" sound and looked down at the tablet in his hands, making a note of something. "That answers our first question."

"What does?" she ground out.

"When I said welcome back a moment ago, I didn't mean to the land of the conscious. I meant to the facility."

Alex frowned. Facility?

"Though I do apologize for the headache," he continued. "You were rather belligerent when you arrived. Milo and Gunnar had to forcibly sedate you."

When she had arrived? When _had_ she arrived? Arrived where and how had she gotten there?

The swirling questions in her brain came to an abrupt halt when her mind was suddenly flooded by memories. Driving, Leigh and Benoist, the video, taking Deacon hostage — it all came back to her.

Her eyes snapped back up. "Deacon," she said. "Where is he?"

"Agent Deacon is perfectly fine. Unconscious, but fine," the man said. "He's right over there." He motioned to his left.

The tunnel vision she was experiencing was expanding out now that her head had more or less stopped spinning and she suddenly noticed the most unnerving detail — Deacon was in a cell.

And so was she.

10x10. White floor and ceiling. Sterile. Glass walls, save the one her back was against.

A panicked chill shot down her spin and settled into a twisting weight in her stomach, but on the back end of that jolt was a defensive fury. Who in the hell did this man think he was?

"Where are we and who are you?" she hissed, climbing to her feet. She didn't like being in a position of weakness in any situation (for the most part), but especially not this one, and while she knew her being held against her will behind a wall of glass kept her in a fundamentally weaker position, she still would not have a conversation with this man while he was standing and she wasn't.

"I'm Doctor Cohen," he said. "We've met before."

"No, we haven't." Even as the words left her mouth, however, something in the back of her mind was telling her that he spoke the truth. There was just something… familiar.

About everything.

The smile he gave her was calculated, almost mechanical. She found it very off-putting. "We have, but it's understandable why you wouldn't remember." He looked back down at his tablet.

"Why are we here?" she tried instead.

His eyes returned to hers and he opened his arms wide, his smile still there. "Scientific progress, of course."

"What?" She swore if he didn't start making sense soon…

"You're a part of something, Agent Danvers. Something amazing, something with the potential to revolutionize." He dropped his arms back to his sides.

"Revolutionize what?" she bit out.

He shrugged. "The world."

Alex was over it. She didn't know what he was talking about and frankly, she didn't care. All she wanted was to leave and go find her sister. "You're holding two government agents against their will, Doctor Cohen," she said, tone cool and professional. "Kidnapping is a federal offense. You need to release us immediately."

"Unfortunately, I can't do that," he replied. "I understand it's an inconvenience, but like I said, you're part of something."

An _inconvenience_? Alex narrowed her eyes.

"Besides," Cohen said as he turned and headed to a computer workstation across from her cell, "I thought you'd want to be with your sister."

"My sister?" Alex felt her heart leap, then immediately plummet. "She's here?" Where was she? What had he done to her? Was she okay?

"Yes, she's here." He wheeled around in the chair to offer her another unnerving smile. "She's quite extraordinary."

Alex felt her blood run cold. "What have you done to her?" she all but growled. "Where is she?"

He waved her off and returned his attention to the computer monitor, tossing a, "Patience, Agent Danvers," over his shoulder.

Cohen plunked away at the computer and with each click of keys, Alex could feel herself beginning to unravel more and more. If she didn't get some answers soon—

A groan from across the room drew her attention. It was Deacon. He was regaining consciousness.

"Ah, perfect timing," Cohen said, glancing at his watch. He picked his tablet up and tapped something into it.

"Deacon?" Alex called, ignoring the doctor.

"Danvers?" Deacon croaked as he pushed himself up into a sitting position and scrubbed a hand over his face. He blinked rapidly for a minute or so, then squinted at her through the glass.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Peachy." He did not sound peachy.

She had questions for him, but didn't dare ask in front of Cohen. Debrief would have to wait for later, as well as her apology for taking him hostage.

The steel door to the left of Alex's cell opened and a behemoth of a man lumbered in. "Everything is set up," he said, his voice surprisingly soft for a man of such intimidating size.

Cohen nodded and rose to his feet. The two of them moved toward Deacon and Alex felt a wave of dread swell in her chest.

Deacon had already scrambled to his feet and moved to the back of his cell. As long as he'd known him, Alex had never seen the man exhibit anything close to fear, but beneath his set jaw and fisted hands, she could see clear unease in his dark eyes. "What are you doing?" she demanded to know the moment they opened Deacon's cell.

"Agent Deacon, if you would," Cohen said, making a sweeping direction toward the steel door the big man had come in from. When Deacon didn't move, Cohen sighed and reached into his pocket, pulling out something. He held it forward and suddenly Deacon was on his knees, gripping his head in obvious pain.

The muscle moved in and grabbed Deacon, hauling him up and steering him toward the door.

"Where are you taking him?" Alex couldn't keep the anger and anxiety out of her voice. "Doctor Cohen! _Where are you taking him_?" She watched as her coworker was manhandled out of the room. _Dammit_. "Deacon!"

The door wasn't shut behind him, nor did Cohen actually leave. He stood to the side of the door, peering out as if he were waiting for something. Alex demanded again to know where Deacon was being taken, but he continued to ignore her. She slammed her fist against the glass in frustration.

"Ah, here we are," Cohen said a few moments later. He looked at Alex and smiled before returning his gaze out the door.

"Doctor Cohen—"

All demands, all protests, all questions fled Alex's mind the very moment she realized who Cohen had been waiting for.

"Kara," she gasped.

Her sister was led into the room by another well-built man. Her hands were free, but around her neck she had some sort of collar. The pallor of her skin and her sluggish movements had Alex's heart racing with anxiety. She had been missing for less than a day and she looked closer to death than Alex had ever seen her (except for maybe when she had been bleeding out on the floor of her apartment after the explosion). Alex didn't know what they had done to her sister, but she wanted to kill them all.

Some life seemed to return to Kara the moment she heard Alex's voice though. "Alex!" Her eyes widened and she tried to move toward Alex, but was yanked back by the man holding her. He dragged her past Alex's cell and deposited her in the one next to it. They shared a glass wall and Alex was immediately over there, hands pressed against it.

Kara dropped to her hands and knees the moment her escort nudged her inside and let go. She remained there panting for a few long moments before she slowly crawled over to the glass wall where Alex was.

Alex was aghast at what she saw close up. There were dark circles under Kara's eyes, seemingly exhausted beyond measure, her arms were bruised and covered in what looked to be track marks, and it seemed to hurt her to move. Alex didn't understand how it was possible. Even if they had been able to break the skin, Kara should have healed immediately afterward. She turned a furious gaze on Cohen. "What the hell did you do to her?"

"She's fine, Agent Danvers."

"You call this 'fine'?" She felt her blood begin to boil. "Look at her!"

"Progress isn't always pretty," he said, "but I assure you she will recover."

"Let me see her," Alex demanded in a low, seething voice. Cohen blinked at her. Figuring that he wouldn't go for "Let us the hell out," she settled for, "Put me in the cell with her."

"Ah." He seemed to consider for a moment before he flicked a hand. "Milo, would you?" The other man —Milo, apparently— moved to a control panel on the far wall and flipped some sort of switch. There was a low hum and then suddenly the wall between the cells began lifting.

Alex pushed back from it, startled, but once the space was big enough, she slipped under it into Kara's cell. Kara, seemingly too weak to actually move to Alex, opened her arms in desperate invitation. Alex immediately launched herself into them, wrapping Kara up tight.

They hugged each other fiercely, clinging to one another for all they were worth. "I was so worried about you," Kara said in breathy hiccups and Alex almost wanted to laugh because it was just so like her sister to be worried about someone else even when she was the one who had been kidnapped.

"You see, Agent Danvers?" Cohen said. "We're not monsters here."

Alex pulled back from the hug, though she kept one arm around Kara, and settled the man with a cool look. She wanted to tell him _exactly_ what she thought he was, but decided the better course of action was to keep her mouth shut. She chose instead to focus on her sister. "Are you okay? What did they—"

"I blew out my powers," Kara whispered as she leaned a little more into Alex, her eyes on Cohen, narrowed and stormy.

Alex turned to look at her sister, not sure she had heard her right. "What?"

"He said he had you," she said, trembling. "There was screaming. It was _you_." She met Alex's eyes. "I was trying to get to you."

"An unfortunate deception, but a necessary one," Dr. Cohen slipped in, his attention back down on his tablet. Alex wasn't sure if the statement was meant to be comforting or what because his tone was so disgustingly insouciant that she wondered if he was even capable of such a thing.

"They have recordings of you, from when you were here before and they were doing… whatever it was they did to you." Kara was clearly struggling to hold herself together. "I've never heard you like that before. It was-it was…"

Alex squeezed her hand.

"It makes it much easier though, doesn't it, Miss Danvers?" Cohen said, looking back up. He smiled at Kara. "No kryptonite is needed in order to gather samples, nor is it necessary to keep you subdued with it."

Alex unconsciously shifted her weight and turned her body, attempting to block Kara from his view. She glared back over her shoulder at him. "No, you just use sedatives and a collar instead," she ground out. She had seen how Kara had been moving when she'd first come into the room.

"Oh, that's not sedatives. The lethargy is a result of the earlier venipuncture," he replied. "And the collar, well, that is kryptonite, but it's fully encased in lead. Unless the casing triggered to withdraw, of course. A simple preventative measure for when her powers return."

He just was so blasé about it all that Alex wanted to strangle him.

There was a soft beep and Cohen reached up to his ear, tapping a comm set he had there. "Go ahead." He paused, listening, then nodded despite the fact that whoever was speaking to him wasn't there to see it. "I'll be there momentarily." He dropped his hand and looked back at them. "If you'll both excuse me, I'm needed elsewhere."

Neither Danvers sister said anything in return. They just watched as he headed toward the door.

He paused right before exiting and turned to look at them once more. "Oh, and Agent Danvers? I wouldn't tinker with the collar if I were you," he said. "Not unless you'd like a slightly smaller, but far more... potent encore of what happened on Christmas Eve." With that, he ducked his head and left, shutting the steel door behind him.

The sisters turned to one another. Alex immediately drew Kara into another hug and just held her for a long minute, needing the closeness of her sister, needing to feel for herself that Kara was there, alive, breathing. "Are you okay?" she asked softly as she finally pulled back.

Kara offered her a weak, exhausted smile. "Yeah. Just tired... Scared." She gave a small shrug followed by an almost guilty look. "Is it a horrible thing to say that I'm glad you're here?"

Alex reached forward and brushed Kara's hair back out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. "No," she replied. "I'm glad I'm here, too. I just wish here wasn't... _here_."

That got a soft, breathy laugh out of Kara and a nod of agreement. "Yeah."

Alex's hands and eyes tracked down Kara's shoulders, coming to rest on the marks on the insides of her arms. She brushed them gently with her thumbs before looking back up. "He said venipuncture. How much blood did they take?"

"I don't know," Kara replied, shaking her head. "Obviously not enough to kill me, but still a lot."

"And that's all that was done?"

Kara frowned, wringing her hands together. "I really don't know, Alex. They poked and prodded and did all sorts of things. I blacked out at one point and when I came to, they were still at it. Cohen said something about marrow next?" Her face crumpled slightly and Alex could tell she was struggling very hard not to cry.

"Hey…" Alex gently squeezed Kara's arm, trying to lend her whatever strength she could.

Kara shook her head, sucking in a shuddering breath. "It's okay. I'm okay. I'm just… I'm ready for the cavalry to show up."

"Yeah, about that…"

"They're not coming?"

"Oh no, they're definitely coming," Alex hurried to reassure. "I just don't know… when exactly."

"Ah," Kara said slowly. "So you and Agent Deacon being captured wasn't a clever ruse to find the location of this secret base thing so that Hank could track you here and rescue us all?"

Alex pursed her lips for a beat. "Uh, not quite." She inwardly winced when her sister's face fell. "I… may have taken Deacon hostage in a mind-controlled haze and driven us here. I made it very difficult for anyone to follow, but don't worry, Hank is on top of things. He'll find us." _She hoped_.

"Mind control..." Kara whispered, then her eyes widened slightly as she seemed to remember something. "Brock and Ellis?"

Alex swallowed hard and shook her head. "Dead."

Kara frowned deeply. "Alex..."

"I know."

"You remember?"

"No," she admitted. "No directly. Surveillance footage. I saw it." She dropped her sister's gaze, aching guilt flaring in her chest. "I remember kidnapping Deacon. I remember getting him to drive far enough away from the others, then having him pull over and knocking him out. And I remember stealing a second car so it couldn't be tracked and driving here. I remember every moment of that, _all of it_ , but everything else..." She shook her head. "All the other memories, the ones that are important, the ones I that _need_ to remember — they're all still dark, dark or secondhand."

Kara's arms were suddenly around her, holding her tight, her chin a comforting weight atop Alex's shoulder. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

Alex swallowed again against the sorrow, and the anger, and the frustration. "I can't control it, Kara. I can't fight it."

"You can, Alex." Kara's tone, though soft, was vehement and inexorable. Her faith in Alex had never been something that could be shaken. "I know you can."

The squeak of the hinges alerted the pair to company and they pulled back just as the steel door finished swinging open. Deacon stepped inside followed by the big guy from before.

"Deacon?" Alex called as she climbed quickly to her feet and moved to the glass wall closest to him. He didn't even look at her, didn't acknowledge her at all. He simply walked across the room, into his cell, and then shut his own cell door. When it was secured, he moved to the middle and just stood there, facing out, expression completely blank.

"Doctor Cohen says you've had enough time," the giant said as he approached the door to Kara's cell, "and that it's now your turn." He was looking directly at Alex.

She frowned. "I'm not leaving my sister," was her immediate, cold reply.

"You don't have a choice," was his answer, and then suddenly Alex's head was screeching.

She cried out, gripping her head in pain, and she heard Kara call her name, urgent and terrified. She tried to respond, but then her body started moving of it's own accord.

"Alex!" Kara tried again, desperate. Alex could see her sister struggling to her feet out of the corner of her eye and more than anything, she wanted to stop. She wanted to stay with Kara, didn't want to leave her alone and afraid.

...And for half a beat, she could have sworn she felt herself hesitate, but then she stepped out of the cell and continued on out of the room, leaving her sister behind screaming her name over and over.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! As you can see, the muse graced me with her presence these past few days and I was able to get this out with minimal time and teeth-pulling! And look, Kara has returned! We can all rejoice now... and then bundle her and Alex up because the poor puppies are having a rough go of it. *cuddles them*
> 
> Now who is this generic villain and what is he up to?! *narrows eyes at him* :D :D
> 
> Next chapter is already in the works, as is a Supergirl fanvid or two! Hopefully I'll have some links for you all by the time the next chapter goes up.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sneaks on and publishes this chapter*

Alex was getting really tired of the whole "waking up, not knowing what's going on" thing. She was also particularly over these damned headaches, too. Slowly, she sat up and pulled her knees to her chest, resting her forehead against them.

Then she remembered.

"Kara!" She snapped her head up and looked around to see she was back in her cell. The wall between hers and Kara's was down again and when she looked inside, she saw that her sister was gone.

"They took her about two hours ago," another voice addressed. "Right after they brought you back."

She turned toward the source to see Deacon sitting in his cell, back against the wall, looking drained.

Alex winced as the bright lights in the room made her head throb more. She raised a hand and rubbed her left temple. "Did they say where they were taking her?"

"They're not exactly a forthcoming bunch."

Gritting her teeth, she nodded. "Right." She took a breath and stared at the floor for a few moments before asking, "How long was I gone?"

Deacon paused this time before answering. "I'm not entirely sure. When I came back, I wasn't really… paying much attention."

She remembered now, remembered how he'd walked in of his own accord, like he was…

 _Brainwashed_. She immediately looked at him again. "Hey Deacon, about before. In the car, and knocking you out. I'm sor—"

He cut her off. "Don't apologize, Danvers." He met her eyes. "I get it now." He clenched his jaw like he was fighting back a serious amount of rage. He sucked a harsh breath in through his nose and shook his head. "I get it. You weren't in control."

She nodded, feeling a swell of guilt-laced relief rise up in her. It was a relief to know that someone actually, truly understood what she was going through and guilt at feeling relief at the expense of someone else. She wouldn't have wished this on anyone.

"We have any idea what they're doing to make us go full P30-injector-controlled Jill Valentine?"

Alex blinked. "You know 'Resident Evil'?"

" _You_ know it?"

The two shared a beat, neither quite smiling because in this situation there was no real room for levity, but still both appreciating the commonality between them. They lapsed into a mutual silence and Alex refocused on the most urgent thought in her mind — _Kara_.

She had a vague recollection of what had happened after she'd been forced to leave the cell, forced to leave her sister behind. She remembered cold metal cuffs tight over her wrists, the burn of injections, and questions. They had asked her a lot of questions — about Kara and her memory and…

_"How did you do it?"_

Do what, she couldn't quite remember. She also couldn't recall giving them any answers either. A brief glimpse of a memory, of a very angry look clouding Cohen's otherwise detached features, flashed across her mind and in that moment, dread surged cold. Was her resistance then causing her sister pain now?

God, they needed to get out of there. They needed _help_.

She wondered for one hysterical second if J'onn's telepathy worked like the Force. If she thought hard enough, would he hear her like Leia had heard Luke in 'Empire Strikes Back'? She shook her head at herself. That was ridiculous… but then again, was it? Most of the world used to think that aliens and superpowers were just stories until the day those stories suddenly stepped out into the light and made themselves real. Who could truly say what was and wasn't possible anymore?

It wasn't even as if she knew the full extent of J'onn's powers either. Maybe he _would_ hear her. And if she was honest, sending out desperately-hopeful-but-likely-useless telepathic cries for help to her alien boss seemed a more viable option right now than praying, so...

 _J'onn_.

 _J'onn, we need your help_.

She felt stupid, but for Kara, she would do anything.

 _ **J'onn**_.

"Hey Danvers?"

She looked up to see an expression on Deacon's face she'd never seen before, one of tremulous uncertainty. He was trying to mask it, but was doing so poorly. He clearly had something on his mind. "Yeah?"

"The footage," he said slowly, "with Brock and Ellis." Her heart sank. She hadn't wanted to think about that. "That wasn't you, I know that, and…" He set his jaw and took a breath, resolve hardening his features. He met her eyes, gaze unwavering. "Look, if there comes a time when I'm not in control and I'm gonna hurt someone, I want you to—"

He was cut off by the steel door swinging open. Alex was up on her feet and over at the closest glass wall before anyone could even enter.

Cohen came in first and when he spotted Alex awake, his spine straightened in an almost too-pleased, preening manner. She narrowed her eyes at him as he walked past her cell and over to the computer.

A moment later, both Milo and...Otis ( _whatever_ the other man's name was) came in, Milo in the lead, then the big guy maneuvering in backwards… pulling a wheelchair.

"Kara!"

Kara was in the wheelchair, head listing sideways, her face deathly pale. She had dark, near-purple circles beneath her eyes; her wrists were chafed from restraints. Her lips were pressed tightly together in a pained line and she looked utterly exhausted.

Alex snapped her eyes back to Cohen and saw red. "What did you—"

Cohen cut her off. "A simple bone marrow extraction procedure, Agent Danvers. She will recover."

Alex couldn't take it anymore, couldn't take his nonchalance and cryptic banter. "Recover? And then what? You'll just take more?" she spat, shaking her head as her fury rose.

"If that's what's needed."

"Needed _for what_?"

"I'm an innovator. Can't you see that?"

Alex watched as the two other men helped Kara out of the wheelchair, lifting her and depositing her down with mechanical precision onto the thin strip of padding along the sole white wall, the only piece of comfort in their sterile prisons. "How are we supposed to _see anything_?" she hissed, returning her attention to Cohen once more. "You haven't told us a damn thing about why we're here or what you're doing to us."

Cohen seemed uninterested in answering the question because his eyes returned to the computer screen.

Alex took one look at her poor sister, with her sallow skin and pale lips, struggling to push herself up into an even partial sitting position, and felt the rage flare hot and murderous. "You know what I see? A generic villain cliché," she seethed, her voice biting, "with your lair and your henchmen, your collars and your cages." Cohen reminded her of many of the guys she had dated in college —arrogant, self-absorbed, thinking they were next to God— and she knew nothing bothered them more than the idea of being generic, of being the same as everyone else.

It seemed to strike a nerve with him, too, because he whipped around to face her, red splotchy patches of withheld anger suddenly creeping their way up his neck. "I am _not_ a villain," he ground out. "All of this is so I can help people!"

"Help people by torturing others?" she countered.

"A small, necessary consequence," he brushed off, "Trivial in the face of what is to come." He shook his head. "Do you realize what could be achieved if morals and ethics weren't involved? How many billions of lives could be saved if discovery wasn't so mired by 'rights' and 'wrongs'?"

"So you _do_ think what you're doing is wrong?"

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Don't put words in my mouth, Agent Danvers. What I'm doing is helping mankind."

"By means of kidnapping and illegal experimentation!"

"If that's what it takes, yes!" Cohen all but exploded. Alex blinked at the outburst, almost surprised by its vehemence. Cohen seemed just as caught off guard as her because he frowned and took a collecting breath before he spoke again. "Do you realize what your sister can do for the world?"

She settled him with a cool glare. "Yes, I'm fully aware."

"I don't mean as Supergirl."

Alarm immediately shot down Alex's spine like arctic electricity.

"Oh, don't give me that look," Cohen said. "You're a scientist like me. You have to see the potential there."

"Potential for what?" came a soft, exhausted croak from Kara. Alex glanced over to see her sister finally in a sitting position. There was still the tightness around her mouth and a tension at the corners of her eyes that spoke to the pain she must have been in.

Cohen ignored her, keeping his attention on Alex. "All those years, all that time spent sitting right across the breakfast table from her." He shook his head again. "How could you ignore that, Alex? I can call you Alex, yes?"

"No."

He seemed unaffected by her stony tone. "As Supergirl, she can save lives. Of course. Thousands, even. But if we study her and figure out how she works, how she heals, how she resists damage — she could save millions. Billions! The cure to _everything_ could be in her blood. You can't tell me you've never thought about it."

The worst part was that Alex _had_ thought about it. How could she not? Setting aside her more flashy powers, Kara was invulnerable and could heal instantly. Alex could hardly imagine how the face of medicine would change if they could harness even a fraction of the latter.

"I read the papers you wrote in college," Cohen continued. "Your research into genetic engineering? I assume it was in correlation to your sister."

His tone bordered on impressed and it made Alex uneasy.

"Just think of the possibilities, Alex." He seemed to be far too enthused to notice the glower she sent his way at his use of her first name. "Think of all the good we could do if we were able to use her as a blueprint!"

Alex frowned deeply. Cohen was all over the place and it was confusing. He was indifferent, then angry, then very nearly giddy. "When did the conversation go from singular megalomania to plural?" she questioned. "Who is 'we'?"

"Work _with_ me," he said as he approached her cell, his face lit with passion and more than a touch of madness. "With both your scientific background and your intimate knowledge of _her_ , there is no limit to what we could achieve. For the price of one alien, we could save our entire world."

"Go to hell." It slipped out hot and fierce before she even had time to consider and she immediately regretted it. The warning bells that had been going off inside her head since the explosion in Kara's apartment were now screaming. Cohen had gone from saying 'Kara', to 'your sister', to referring to her as an alien. He was dehumanizing her, lessening her value as a person, separating her from the worth of humanity.

The enthusiasm slipped immediately away, his face darkening and his piercing eyes turning stormy with obvious anger.

 _Crap_. It wasn't that she gave a damn if he was mad or not (frankly, he could die in a fire for all she cared), but the sting of her lightning-quick tongue had also just severed the "connection" she was sure Cohen thought he'd been creating with her, something that might have helped free them all.

Alex took a breath. " _Kara_ is not laboratory monkey you can just run tests on. She's a _person_." She put emphasis on her sister's name, hoping to remind him that Kara wasn't just a resource, to reinforce that she wasn't expendable.

"So? She's not human," he said flippantly, turning his back on Alex and moving over to the workstation once more. "There are no laws safeguarding aliens."

Alex wasn't sure what to say. You couldn't negotiate with crazy.

"Is that true?" came the soft question from Kara. Alex looked over at her, thinking she was wondering if there being no laws affording aliens basic rights was true, but then her sister continued, asking, "Could you really use my blood and whatever to save people?"

Alex's brow furrowed and shook her head. "Kara, don't—"

"I can and I will," Cohen stated with cold confidence, still not bothering to look at Kara as he spoke.

"If that's the goal, then why not just keep me and let Alex and Deacon go?"

Anxiety flooded Alex. "Kara, _stop_." There was no way she would ever just leave, Kara had to know that.

"Very noble of you, but I need them as well."

"For what?"

Cohen didn't answer the question. Instead he finished typing something into the computer, then turned back to Alex. "Final chance," he said. "You still won't help me?"

Alex paused, this time thinking first before she spoke. Was he delusional enough to think she would change her mind in the span of 3 minutes? Perhaps...

She looked over and stared at her sister for a long beat, chocolate eyes meeting sky blue. Of course she didn't want to help, not for the entire world, but at the same time, saying yes might give her a certain level of access that could lead to escape. For that chance, she was more than willing to lie.

She took a breath and returned her attention to Cohen. "If I agreed," she said slowly, as if deliberating, "would you allow me to be the one to handle any sort of invasive procedures done to my sister? So I can assure she is as comfortable as possible and isn't unnecessarily abused in any way?"

She felt ill even posing the questions and when she glanced at Kara to see the confused and almost betrayed expression on her face, the nausea compounded to near-unbearable. There was no way in hell she'd actually ever experiment on her sister and she knew Kara would know that, she _had_ to know that, but the look Kara was giving her was enough to give her pause. She _did_ know that, right?

" _If_ ," Cohen began, drawing her gaze back to him, "if I thought you were being truthful, if I thought your loyalty fell with the science instead of the alien, I would absolutely allow you these things, but no matter how you school your expression, _Agent Danvers_ , I know you now and I know your priority will always be _her_. So, _no_."

"Then why—"

"—Did I even ask?" The smile that slipped across his lips was vile and serpentine. "Because I wanted to witness your deceit and see the pained look on her face," he motioned to Kara, "as she considered if your words were truly false or not."

The nausea churned and turned hot with fury. She wanted to strangle the smug look right off of his face. _Bastard_.

"I will, however, offer you a chance at a sliver of redemption which, if you take it, will save all of us a great deal of undue stress."

She didn't ask how, just remained quiet. Whatever his proposal, she had a feeling she would not like it.

"I presented you with a series of questions before, all of which you refused to answer," he said, his tone taking on a subtle, but clearly angry edge. "Tell me what I wish to know."

 _And if I don't?_ she wanted to ask, but at the same time, dreaded knowing the answer.

"If you don't," he said, seemingly reading her mind. Her blood immediately chilled. "Well…" He looked over at his two muscles and gave a nod. "If you will, Mister Gunnar."

Gunnar, stone-faced and menacing, moved towards Deacon's cell.

Deacon quickly climbed to his feet and tensed for a fight.

"What are you doing?" Alex immediately asked. "Don't touch him."

"Don't worry, we won't be the ones doing the touching," Cohen said as he picked up his tablet and stepped toward Gunnar. He tapped it and Deacon grew suddenly stiff, his eyes vacant. Gunnar opened the cell and Deacon stepped out.

Gunnar moved to Kara's and opened the door. "Agent Deacon, if you'd please step inside," Cohen said. Deacon followed the request without hesitation, moving immediately through the open door into Kara's cell where he then stopped and just stood there. Gunnar secured the door behind him.

Kara frowned in obvious confusion. "Deacon?" she tried. He didn't respond.

"Now," Cohen began, turning back to Alex. He smiled as he walked over to the glass wall. "You might not remember the questions I posed to you before. The sodium thiopental cocktail I administered you, especially paired with the hypnosis, may have left things a little fuzzy. So, as a courtesy, I will ask the questions again."

Alex frowned. He'd used some, no doubt, volatile truth serum of some sort on her and had also hypnotized her? _What the…_ He was clearly desperate.

"Deacon?" Kara tried again, pushing herself painfully up onto her feet. She swayed there for a moment and had to brace against the wall in order to steady herself. After a moment, she took a step toward him.

Alex's attention was immediately drawn back to her sister. "Kara, no!" she exclaimed. "Keep away from him!" When Kara's head immediately turned toward Alex and she frowned in confusion, Alex softened her tone slightly and added, "Just to be safe. He's not in control right now."

Kara looked uneasy, but didn't argue. She just stepped back against the wall.

Cohen rapping his knuckle against the glass brought Alex's eyes back to him. He tapped the tablet screen and then held it up for her to see. It was footage of Brock and Ellis' deaths and Kara's kidnapping, only it wasn't the ATM footage. It was clearer, a bit higher off the ground, and from a different angle. Alex would have wagered it had been shot from the dashboard of the van they had driven off in once they'd captured Kara.

"Why are you showing me this?" she bit out. From this angle, the impact of the bullets hitting Brock and Ellis was even more brutal and it made her feel sick.

"What is happening here?" Cohen asked.

Alex grit her teeth. "You can see for yourself what happened."

"Humor me."

"I killed two very good men." Her hands were shaking with tempestuous resentment. "Because of you."

Cohen shook his head. "Not that part." He restarted the video. "Watch again."

She did for all of two seconds before she dropped her gaze, unable to watch herself murder two innocent men yet again. "I don't know what you want from me."

"Why did you hesitate?"

Her head shot back up, eyes ablaze with furious loathing. It was aimed both at him and inwardly. "I didn't hesitate! Can't you see that? I pulled out the gun and killed them both!"

"Yes," Cohen said calmly. _Too_ calmly for Alex's raging nerves — it made her want to break through the glass and strangle him all the more. "Yes, that was perfectly executed." He paused a beat, his eyes suddenly twinkling and the corners of his lips turning very slightly upward in amusement. "Pardon the pun."

The blinding hatred for the man before her burned so hot that Alex almost couldn't breathe. She had met some crazy people before, heartless people, villains and tyrants, but no one had ever gotten to her like this man was getting to her now. She was pretty sure he knew it, too, which made it all the more infuriating.

"But that's still not what I'm asking about."

Alex clenched her fists at her sides, her grip so tight that her short nails began to bite into her palms. She shook. She didn't know what he was talking about and was so beyond angry that she couldn't even think clearly enough to figure it out.

"He means with me."

Both looked at Kara, who had moved unnoticed by Alex from the back wall to the one between them. She had the almost-panicky look on her face that she tended to get whenever Alex was about to fight with Eliza and she was trying to divert the conversation to less-hostile territory before things got too heated.

Alex sucked in a quiet breath through her nose, trying to wrangle her rage. Losing her head wasn't going to help anyone. "What?" she asked her sister.

Kara looked at her, to the tablet, and back again, flicking a finger toward the screen. "You didn't shoot me. You hesitated."

"Gold star for the Kryptonian," Cohen commended in a near-deadpan.

Alex frowned and looked back at the tablet screen. She had hesitated? "I did…?"

"You should have shot her as well. That was the command — to eliminate everyone there besides my men," he said.

The video replayed. Alex watched as she killed Brock and Ellis without so much as blinking, but then, she suddenly noticed, after finishing off Brock, she'd turned the gun on Kara… and did nothing. Her hand shook as she held the weapon stretched out toward her sister, but she did not pull the trigger. In fact, she could just make out herself actually struggling to keep her finger _off_ of the trigger.

"Why did you hesitate?" Cohen repeated. "Was it a logical thing? You knew that with her being Kryptonian it would do no damage to her or was it something else?"

She shook her head, saying, "I don't know." She was amazed and baffled and infinitely relieved by what she now saw. They had wanted her to shoot Kara and she _hadn't._ She had been able to fight it!

He squinted at her, clearly not approving of her answer. "That's what you kept saying before."

She blinked, his suddenly-tense tone like being doused in ice water **.** She brought her attention back up to him. "And it's the truth," she said stiffly, and it was, more or less. She didn't really remember the situation, only pieces. It was all just disjointed images and snippets of sounds.

Cohen dropped his hands to his sides with an almost childish huff. "I don't understand why you insist on being difficult. Everything would be so much easier if you would just answer my questions."

Alex frowned at the man. He didn't understand why _she_ was being difficult? "Look, Cohen," she clipped out, ire rising once again, "I don't know what to tell you. You screwed with my head and because of it, all the answers are gone."

He didn't seem to believe her. The muscles in his jaw jumped as he grit his teeth and he took a sharp breath through his nose. "You try my patience, Agent Danvers. One _last_ time. Why did you—"

"I don't _remember_!" She didn't know how to make it any clearer.

His eyes narrowed at her outburst and he stood there, clenching the one hand that wasn't holding the tablet until his knuckles were white. Three seconds passed, then four, five, six, seven…

His hand suddenly relaxed and he seemed to come to some sort of pleasing conclusion because he smiled ever so slightly and nodded to Alex, calmly saying, "Perhaps a little incentive will help you draw out those memories for me." He looked past her into Kara's cell. "Agent Deacon, please hurt Supergirl for me."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC. Okay, so I am incredibly sorry for leaving you all hanging for so damn long. A lot of crap went down in my personal life and my brain would not brain. Then I had to move across the country from Florida to California (BY CAR) which took even more of my time up and while you'd think a billion hours in a car with limited scenery would equal a perfect place to write, for me, it is not. I'm a terrible, terrible traveler. Carsickness and death. It's the worst.
> 
> Anyway, all that said, I am now (more or less) settled in California, so I'll hopefully be able to concentrate a lot more on my writing. I even have 2 weekly writing groups to go to here! It is glorious. I've also already written the next chapter and it shall be up soon - I'm just sprucing it up a little before posting.
> 
> A special thank you to my soulclone and roommate, Shannon (Shannyfish) and also Jay (takingthehighwayhome on Tumblr) for all their help in keeping me motivated and offering ideas when I was so very stuck. You two are amazing, wonderful, beautiful, shiny shiny stars in my sometimes-very-dark sky. And also thank you so much to all of you who checked in with me to make sure I was still alive and still writing - you guys are THE BEST!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, VIOLENCE WARNING!

"What?!" Alex whipped around and watched in horror as Deacon moved in on Kara. He was quick and Kara was both too startled and too weak to get away from him. He hit her, a brutal backhand across the face that drove her to the ground, and when she was on all fours, he kicked her hard in the ribs, flipping her back-first into the glass barrier with a resounding _thud_.

"Deacon, stop!" Alex cried as he drew his leg back to kick her again.

"Enough," Cohen commanded.

Deacon stopped instantly, leaving a wheezing Kara lying on the ground clutching her ribs.

"Kara?" Alex crouched down at her sister's level, pressing her hands against the glass, trying to get a better look. "Kara?"

"M'okay," Kara groaned as she pushed herself up into a sitting position and turned her head to look at Alex, wiping blood away from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Anything yet?" Cohen asked and when Alex turned her darkened gaze on him, she could have sworn she saw a manic twinkle of enjoyment cross his pristine visage.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she snarled.

Cohen sighed as if disappointed and shook his head before flicking his hand at Kara. "Get her up, Mister Deacon."

"Deacon, don't touch her!" Alex tried to counter.

"He doesn't take orders from you, Agent Danvers," Cohen stated. "He'll only respond to me now."

Deacon reached down and grasped Kara by the upper arms, pulling her to her feet.

"Hold her there."

Deacon attempted to pin Kara against the partition by her arms, but all the training Alex had put her through seemed to instinctively surge to the surface because she immediately used one of the maneuvers Alex taught her to break free of the hold. The brief flare of pride Alex felt was instantly replaced by fear again when Deacon snatched Kara back before she could even get half a step away and whipped her around, slamming her face-first back into the wall. He pinned her there with her arm twisted harshly behind her and his forearm pressed against the back of her neck.

"How did you know to go to the construction site on Leigh Street?" Cohen was looking down at his tablet again as if he were reading notes, his tone akin to a bored teen being forced to ask survey questions to strangers at the mall. "Did you remember the address? Or was it instinct?"

Alex's attention wasn't on him, however. She was staring at the blood from her sister's split lip smearing on the divider, crimson and terrifyingly vivid. It brought her instantly back to the moment she'd woken after the explosion in Kara's apartment to find her sister deathly pale, breathing ragged, lying in a pool of blood. "I—"

"Don't tell him anything, Alex," Kara gasped out, struggling to buck Deacon back off of her and relieve the pressure on her neck. "He's just going to use what you tell him to hurt more people."

Cohen dropped his chin to his chest with a vexed growl. "The more everyone insists I am a monster, the more I desire to become one. Deacon, if she speaks again, stop her. Forcibly."

Alex met Kara's eyes and shook her head once, sharply. "Don't," she said when Kara opened her mouth again. She didn't know the exacts of Deacon's programming, didn't know if he needed full directions or if he still had some autonomy to choose how he carried out orders. Either way, she didn't want to find out what forcibly stopping her sister would entail.

"You were saying, Agent Danvers?" Cohen prodded.

She looked at him. "You said you used hypnosis? And sodium thiopental?"

He cocked an eyebrow at her and the muscles in his jaw jumped as he clenched it, clear signs of patience quickly fleeting. She immediately sped up her questioning. "You said that got nothing, so why do you think then that I actually have any answers?"

"You were at the construction site. You didn't magically stumble upon it. Now, _stop stalling_."

She _was_ stalling, she realized. She wasn't sure what for though. To buy J'onn more time? To buy more time for Kara to regain her powers (somehow)? To buy more time for a miracle to happen? "Look, I'm not—"

"Deacon!"

"No!"

But it was too late, Deacon had already wrenched Kara's arm up and twisted it to near-breaking point, ripping a pained cry from her still-bloodied lips.

"Cognitive interview!" Alex exclaimed in a panic.

Cohen narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"I remembered during a cognitive interview, which is when—"

"I know what a cognitive interview is!" he snapped. "But that only works if you have memories to draw from, which you shouldn't have had."

"I don't know how—"

"Deac—"

"No, wait! What I mean is that it wasn't so much the questions that drew out the memories, but my state of mind."

"Explain."

"I was in an open state. The questions were being asked by someone I trusted," she told him. It wasn't a complete lie — she had fully trusted J'onn when he'd been in her head. "I was comfortable and secure. Relaxed. It allowed my mind to explore without being guarded. I'm not sure why it helped, but it did." It sounded painfully like bullshit to her ears and the silence that met her statement had her stomach instantly in knots.

Cohen stared at Alex for a long, tense beat before he snapped his piercing eyes over to the other two and bit out, "Kill her, Agent Deacon." He started to move away only to turn back and toss a, "But not too quickly," over his shoulder.

"What?!" Alex exploded, "You can't do that!"

Deacon ripped Kara away from the glass partition and threw her across the cell.

"I believe you'll find that I can," Cohen said. His words were dismissive, but his tone was tight, angry.

"Deacon, stop," Kara implored as she climbed shakily back to her feet, holding her hands out in front of her in a pleading manner. "Please."

His expression was stony, his body rigid with tension. He turned around to face her, his movements almost mechanical, and then stalked toward her. He swung a furious fist at Kara's head and she ducked, just barely avoiding it. Unsteady, she stumbled back away from him, her back colliding with the glass wall behind her. "Deacon!" she tried again, but he did not stop.

Alex watched in horror as her sister did her best to avoid or block Deacon's attacks. She turned wild and terrified eyes on Cohen who didn't even seem to be paying attention. He was just staring down at his tablet.

"Cohen, stop him!"

He didn't look at her. "Why would I do that, Agent Danvers? You refuse to help me, so why should I help her?"

"You need her!" She was desperate, grasping for anything to convince the mad doctor.

"She is very precious to me, yes," he agreed, this time meeting her gaze. "Very valuable, but she is not the only one of her kind. Another can be caught." He shrugged slightly. "Besides, as a scientist yourself, you know as well as I do that a great deal of information can be gathered from a corpse."

It took Alex a second to grasp his words, to process them, but the moment she did, she felt her entire world tilt in terror.

Kara cried out in pain, tearing Alex's eyes from Cohen and back to the her sister. Kara was on the ground, on her hands and knees, crawling away from Deacon toward Alex. There was a trail of crimson smears marring the spotless surface of the white floor and when Kara lifted her face to meet Alex's eyes with a panicked gaze, Alex saw the source of the blood was split flesh along her little sister's cheekbone.

Alex was trained not to give away information, trained to undergo interrogation and withstand torture, but this was too much. This was her _sister_. She immediately began racking her brain for something, anything, she could say that would bring her sister's torture to a halt… something, anything, that would save Kara's life.

Deacon came up behind Kara, blocking the weak, backwards kick Kara sent his way in an effort to fend him off, and grabbed her by the hair, close to the scalp. He tore her away from the glass divider and down, slamming her hard onto the floor.

"Deacon! _Stop_!" Alex cried, but he continued to ignore her.

He climbed atop Kara, straddling her, and wrapped his hands around her throat.

"I saw a flash!" burst out of Alex in a straining wheeze.

Cohen blinked up at her. "A flash?" he questioned. "Explain."

"Just an image, of the street signs at the corner of Leigh and Benoist." She spoke in a rush, petrified and desperate.

Kara struggled to break Deacon's hold.

"Did you have more of these flashes?" Cohen asked, tone intrigued.

"Yes!"

"Of?"

"I don't know!"

Kara's breaths were short and ragged, her face was turning scarlet. Her arms shook as she tried to dig Deacon's fingers out from around her throat.

"Think hard. For your sister's sake."

"Uh, uh, um—" Alex's eyes were solely on the struggle in the other cell and she couldn't think, _couldn't think_. "Of, uh—"

"Agent Dan—"

"Sheet metal and the bay! Sunset! Different smells and a burning sensation." She glanced quickly back at Cohen. "Stop him!"

"When did these flashes actually happen?" he asked as he tapped notes into his tablet.

"When I was asleep! Dreams."

"Hmmm…" He glanced upward for a beat as if he were pondering such a possibility.

A pained choking sound from Kara immediately drew Alex's attention once more. "Please, _please_ stop him!"

"One more question," Cohen very nearly sing-songed, but he didn't ask until Alex looked at him again. His expression shifted from gleeful to dark and coldly inquisitive. "Why did you hesitate?"

" _Because she's my sister!_ "

There was a beat and then Cohen breathed out what seemed a surprisal-dawning, "Huh."

If Alex hadn't been so concerned with Kara, she might have wondered a bit more at his mental process, at why he hadn't considered that emotional connection could be the answer to his question, but as it was, her confoundment at the fact was but fleeting as she watched Deacon choking the life out of her sister.

"I answered your questions, now please stop him," she pleaded, " _Please_ , Cohen!"

Shrugging, Cohen wandered away from the cells and for a sickening beat, Alex was absolutely convinced that he was going to let Kara die, but then he hit the controls on the far wall. "You stop him," he said. The partition began to rise. Alex didn't hesitate — the moment the gap was wide enough, she slid through.

With no other thought in her mind than getting Deacon off of her sister, she tackled him hard and fast from behind, ripping him away from Kara. They rolled, a tangle of limbs, and slammed into the solid white wall.

Kara coughed, gagged, and wheezed, gasping to recover her stolen breath. Alex didn't look at her to check if she was alright, however, she couldn't — her sole focus had to be on Deacon.

They struggled, Deacon trying to get to Kara and Alex trying to keep him away.

"God dammit, Deacon, _stand down_!" Deacon's reply was to elbow Alex in the face and lunge out of her grasp. She recovered quickly and dove for his legs, taking him down again just as he was about to reach Kara. It was like he was a mad dog; the thing driving his crazed mind, his sole purpose, was to complete his programmed task of killing Kara.

Kara had one-handedly scrambled back away from the pair, her other hand wrapped around her abused throat.

Deacon lashed out with a vicious kick, catching Alex right in her still-healing knee. She didn't know if it had just been a lucky shot or if Deacon was somehow able to access his own knowledge of her even under Cohen's control, but either way, the tearing pain that followed had her crying out and the joint collapsing beneath her.

"Alex!" Kara rasped out, laboring up onto her feet.

Deacon's head whipped around at the sound of her voice and his eyes narrowed as if he were zeroing in on his target. He charged Kara, catching her just as she straightened up and knocking her back. She would have ended up flat if she hadn't been so close to the front wall. The back of her head thudded resoundingly off of the glass, the gonging sound echoing throughout the small fish tank of a cell.

He was on her in an instant, swinging a savage hook at her skull. Kara barely recovered in time to toss up weak block, glancing the blow off of her shoulder. She tried to lash out with the other arm, a move Alex had taught her… or half of the move Alex had taught her. It was meant to maneuver the opponent into a less dominant position where follow-up moves could be used to completely incapacitate, but with Kara, it seemed she was using it simply to push him back… which didn't really work.

When she'd first blown out her powers fighting Red Tornado, Alex had run a great deal of tests on her sister, including a test of her strength. Without her powers, Kara was quite a bit weaker than the average human, and with all she'd been through, her attempted shove hardly even shifted Deacon.

He went for her throat again.

Alex didn't give herself any time to process the pain, just struggled up onto her feet before immediately and urgently limping the short distance to the battling pair. She reached forward and tried to yank Deacon away from Kara again, but he maneuvered expertly out of her grip.

Kara choked out a pained little grunt as she tried to keep Deacon's fingers from her throat.

Alex reacted instinctively to the sound. She lashed out with her injured leg and kicked him hard in the back of the knees, ignoring the agony that burned hot through her tortured ligaments. The moment his legs collapsed under the force of the blow and he dropped down to the right height, she struck with precision and very little mercy, swinging her arm around and catching him right in the nerve bundle behind his ear. He went rigid for a second, then slumped over.

He was unconscious.

Alex hopped back a few steps, panting roughly at the fire lancing up her abused leg. She shook out her hands, trying to rid herself of the agitated energy that was making her fingers tingle. She met Kara's eyes. "Are you okay?" she asked, voice quavering at all the adrenaline rushing her system.

Kara stood there for probably three seconds, her expression still one of panic, before she seemed to realize she could breathe now and started sucking in deep, ragged breaths. She shook her head slightly. "Not remotely," she wheezed.

The younger Danvers sister pushed off of the wall and took a stumbling step past Deacon's downed body and toward Alex. She reached out and their hands met, fingers tangling and gripping tight. Alex took several more pained hops away from Deacon, pulling Kara along with her.

"I'd, uh, be mindful if I were you," Cohen intoned, drawing both Alex and Kara's attention. He motioning vaguely past them to Deacon. "When knocked unconscious, Agent Deacon is designed to, essentially, _reboot_." A smile flitted across his lips, the expression on his face like a pleased father. "Within seconds, if not immediately."

The very moment the words were out of his mouth, her sister's hand was torn from Alex's and in the half beat it took to whip her head around, Deacon already had Kara on the ground again with his hands around his throat.

"Deacon, no!" Alex yelled as she dove at him, immediately wrapping her arm around his neck in a chokehold. She squeezed tight, trying to pull him up and off of Kara. He didn't budge and with only the use of one leg, Alex didn't have enough power to leverage his 6'4" frame.

Kara, red-faced and gasping desperately for a breath that couldn't get past Deacon's unforgiving grip, slapped and scratched at his hands.

"There's only one way, Agent Danvers," Cohen hinted.

She could just barely see him out of the corner of her eye, but it was enough, enough to see the disgusting mirth alight in his crystalline eyes. She immediately knew what the "one way" he was talking about was.

Her stomach dropped and nausea flared hot. _No_.

She couldn't, she _couldn't_. There had to be another way. If she could just… just…

Her mind swirled, grasped, dug deep for any answer other than the one she already had, other than the immutable one… but found none. They were all puppets in this twisted game and Cohen was pulling the strings.

Kara made another grunting-gagging- _dying_ hack; Alex's arms shook with the strain of trying to choke out the man killing her sister.

Giving up was not in Alex Danvers nature. She absolutely hated it, so when she felt Deacon sway slightly, a momentary jolt of hope shot up her spine. She thought maybe it was working, maybe she was almost there, maybe she was about to free her sister again… but then she saw the whites of her sister's wide, terrified eyes begin to turn sanguine. _Petechial hemorrhage._ The capillaries were beginning to rupture from the pressure. She was losing. She was losing Kara.

She squeezed harder; Deacon did the same.

One or the other.

No choice.

None.

Alex met Kara's eyes.

_I'm so sorry._

The sound of snapping bone reverberated throughout the glass prison.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! A mildly shorter chapter and yes, I do know I'm particularly mean leaving it here. *grin*


	9. Chapter 9

She stared down at the body at her feet.

She'd stopped squeezing. She'd stopped squeezing and had twisted instead.

"—Was right. You truly are impressive."

Alex's ears were ringing; she only heard some of it. When she finally raised her head, she noticed that Cohen had moved from her cell down to Kara's and was now standing barely half a foot from the wall, his eyes wide and alight with glee like a child peering through the glass at his favorite zoo animal. "So very lethal," he continued and it sounded like praise.

Alex almost puked.

"Alex?" Kara rasped, confused and dismayed. When Alex looked down, she saw her sister propped up on her elbows and her crimson-stained eyes staring unblinking at Deacon's prone form. "What—"

He was still atop Kara, draped unmoving across her lower half. She reached forward and tried to pushed him off with one hand. His muscular mass shifted only slightly. "Alex?" Kara addressed again and this time there was a pleading note to her tone.

Alex reached down without thought, mind and body on autopilot, and the pair were able to roll him to the side. Kara scrambled away from Deacon as fast as she could in her weakened state. She grasped Alex's proffered hand and allowed her to help pull her to her feet.

Alex studied her sister's bloodied and bruise-mottled face, noticing the fear, pain, and horror written so clearly across it, and immediately pulled Kara forward into a hug. Alex had reached the point where she just couldn't give two flying fucks that Cohen was still standing there watching.

Kara leaned almost fully into Alex like a child desperately seeking out comfort and Alex grit her teeth against the hot torment that the added weight sent spiking up and down her damaged limb. She accepted the pain the pressure put on her legs without complaint though and held tight, keeping her sister up.

"Is he…?" Kara asked softly.

Alex turned her face into her sister's hair and whispered a remorseful, "Yes."

She'd killed him, killed Deacon. She'd snapped his neck in a move that, when it had been taught to her, she thought she'd never ever use.

"I'm sorry, Alex..." Kara's throat was against her shoulder and Alex felt the vibrations of the hushed words seep into her bones, turning her cold and tightening her chest. She heard it in her sister's words — a great sadness for what Alex had had to do and for the loss of Deacon, but there also something more. It was the unsaid _"If I'd just…"_ and it absolutely killed Alex to hear that guilt in Kara's tremulous voice.

"Hush now," Alex murmured as she rubbed warming circles into her sister's shoulder blade. She was trying for soothing, but the adrenaline and the chaotic anguish in her mind was making her movements choppy and perhaps a bit rough.

Kara's hold on her suddenly tightened into a squeezing embrace and Alex was fairly certain that, for the first time, her little sister was actually using most of her strength, if not all. Whether it was to comfort Alex or to comfort herself, she wasn't sure, but it broke Alex's heart just a little bit more either way.

"Thank you, Alex." Cohen's voice was almost peppy and even when she turned her dark scowl on him, the pleased air about him seemed to remain. Keeping her arms wrapped securely around her sister, she shifted her weight to place herself more firmly between him and Kara, again biting down hard to mask the painful protest her knee made at the movement.

"You've given me a lot to consider," he continued, finishing whatever he was inputting into his tablet with a flourishing _pop_ of his fingers against the glass interface. "Tweaks will certainly have to be made."

He grinned, _grinned_ , and Alex wanted nothing more than to smash in his teeth.

Cohen tossed a glance over his shoulder at Milo and Gunnar, who had both been standing there unflinchingly the entire time. "Milo, see to it that our guests get some lunch. I'm sure they're both quite hungry by now." He looked back at Alex and Kara, adding, "If you two will excuse me." He turned and left the room without another word, his steps light and his expression enthusiastically determined. His men followed.

Lunch? Was he serious?

Alex again felt like she was going to puke.

_Of course_ he was serious. He was psychotic. Alex wasn't entirely sure what sort of damage had to be done to a person to strip them so completely of their humanity, but if Cohen's pitiless insanity had been behavior born of childhood trauma instead of a genetic psychosis he was afflicted with at conception, she imagined that what had been done to him to turn him into such a monster must have been completely horrifying.

Did she feel sympathy for Cohen and what he might have endured throughout his lifetime?

_Not one damn bit._

At this point, her mind was made up. When she got out, she was going to destroy him. There was no force in the universe that would be able to stop her.

"Alex, you can't," Kara croaked.

Alex turned her burning glare away from the closed steel door and blinked. She realized that her sister was staring at her, her gaze wide and very clearly frightened. Alex thought that the fear was a lasting result of what had just happened to them, but then Kara reached up and placed her hands on either side of Alex's face, holding them there.

"I hate him," she whispered. " _I hate_ _him_." And with the blood staining her face and the tears of anger in her eyes, Alex absolutely believed it... and that scared her. Kara didn't hate anyone, not really, but the vehemence, the ice, in her abused and raspy voice made Alex fully realize that even the biggest of hearts could be tainted when so cruelly mistreated.

Her own heart seized woefully that the gut-shredding horror of such a thing, of the idea of Kara's ceaseless and breathtaking light being tarnished in any way. There was no other thought that terrified her more. If her sister, her sweet Kara, could be corrupted, what hope was there for the rest of them?

"But we can't become like him," Kara pressed, regarding Alex steadfastly and with great weight. "We have to be better."

For a few beats after the hushed words left her sister's lips, Alex didn't quite hear them, her fear and her own despisal of Cohen making it difficult for her to process what had been said, but the moment she did, she felt her chest loosen in a rush of heady relief. Her Kara was still there — hurt and struggling, but still ready to make the right choice.

Which lead Alex to wonder how her sister knew she had been resolute on the wrong one.

"I wasn't—"

"I know you, Alex," Kara said softly, "and the look you just had…"

Alex swallowed her protest. It would have been a lie anyway and she'd promised her sister no more lies. Her eyes drifted downward, for a moment ashamed enough that she couldn't meet her sister's aching and earnest gaze. Deacon's face came into view, stark and lifeless, his color already fading.

The squirming, churning, twisting in her gut blazed anew and she had to grit her teeth and swallow hard against it. She reached up and pulled Kara's hands from her face. She couldn't do this, couldn't be there right next to him. She needed distance, room to breathe. She didn't say anything, just tugged gently on Kara's hands, coaxing her along.

Alex couldn't mask the pain in her step any longer, her limp a heavy one. Kara didn't say anything, but judging by how much the Kryptonian was leaning on her, Alex suspected her lack of query had something to do with the fact that she was concentrating so intensely on keeping _herself_ upright.

The divider was still up and Alex made the decision to move them to her cell, to back corner, the farthest point they could get from Deacon's body. She helped Kara down first before struggling down into a seated position beside her.

Her knee was already swelling, her skin feeling hot and uncomfortably tight beneath the pant leg of the white scrubs she was in, but she knew it had to be nothing compared to how her sister must have felt.

Kara's throat was a mess of emerging bruises, blue, dark purple, and so, so angry. Deacon's handprints were clearly outlined against her pale skin. Her face, forlorn and exhausted, wasn't much better, with the clear contusions rising to the surface just like her neck and the alarming gash along the bone of her cheek. It was still bleeding.

Alex didn't think, just pulled off her scrub top, leaving her in only the white sports bra beneath, and balled it up, pressing it to Kara's cheek. Her sister responded with sharp intake of breath and tried to pull away. Alex reached up with her other hand and gently cupped Kara's opposite cheek, keeping her in place.

"Sorry," she murmured, "but stay still." She almost said that it needed to be tended to or it would scar, but then she realized that wasn't true. Either Kara would get her powers back and it would heal… or she would die. With how things were now, Alex's mind could conjure up no other options.

_They_ would die, she mentally corrected, the resolution dark, but right with her heart. She would not let her sister die alone. Either they both survived or neither did.

After she was satisfied that the bleeding had sufficiently slowed, Alex did her best to wipe away the excess rivulets of scarlet staining the side of her sister's face. It was a grim task that she was both happy to undertake, but also hated. She loved being able to care for her sister in whatever way she could, but hated that this sort of care was necessary.

She had situated Kara so that she had to turn her back on Deacon in order to face Alex, but Alex herself was facing him directly and as she continued to tend to Kara, she found herself staring over her sister's shoulder into his unblinking gaze. His pupils had dilated in death and were now taking up most of his russet brown irises. It looked unnatural and left her feeling completely unnerved.

She hadn't closed his eyes. _She hadn't closed his eyes_. Alex's stomach churned as it kept echoing through her mind. She couldn't convince herself to go do it now though. She just… she couldn't. She couldn't approach him, couldn't touch him. It was just too much.

Alex couldn't believe this had happened, couldn't believe it _was_ happening. She was supposed to be better than this. She had trained to be better than this. She should have been able to get control of the situation by now and get them out, _all_ of them, but she hadn't. She had failed Deacon and she was still failing Kara.

Deacon continued to stare at her and no matter how she tried, she couldn't look away. She felt breathless and ill, a roaring _whoosh,_ painful and consuming, thundering through her ears. It felt like she was waiting on the precipice of a gaping maw, dark and endless. Waiting, waiting, _waiting_ … for the beast to snatch her up suddenly and swallow her whole.

"—Lex?... Alex!"

Kara's voice cut through the roar. Alex blinked and suddenly found the strength to turn her head, to look away. She met Kara's concerned gaze and slowly the realization that her sister had been trying to speak to her sank in, pushing past the...

What had that just been? A panic attack? She frowned slightly. Alex Danvers did not have panic attacks, least of all in the middle of a critical situation. _It had to have been something else…_ Even as the conclusion, vehement and determined, stomped through her mind, she knew she was fooling herself. _Something_ had happened just then, something inside of her had broken.

She took a steeling breath, clenching her hands into tight fists to keep them from shaking, and said, "Sorry, I was just—"

Kara leaned into her, wrapping her arms around her. "We're going to be okay," she whispered into Alex's ear.

Alex wasn't sure if the softness was her sister trying to be gentle and comforting or if it was because her throat had swollen to the point now where all she could manage was whispers and dry rasps. The latter thought made her chest ache with bleak unhappiness, guilt, and so much anger. Her mind immediately returned to the idea of making Cohen pay, of completely destroying him in every way she could imagine. It was uncharacteristic of her, she knew, but she just couldn't help it.

Her job may have involved violence; she may have been trained to fight and, sometimes, kill; she may have utilized the more aggressive aspects of what she'd learned under Hank's tutelage in order to forcibly achieve certain objectives. All of this was true. However, she was _not_ innately a violent person. She did not _enjoy_ hurting anyone.

Okay, so a few times she'd rather enjoyed it, but each had been in response to some form of bullying, usually someone picking on Kara. She'd never felt bad about popping Jesse Barker in the nose for calling Kara a freak, nor had she ever felt an inkling of guilt for all the particularly brutal fantasies she'd had about Maxwell Lord and what she'd like to do his pearly teeth whenever he smiled that smarmy smile at her. Other than that, though, she'd never been in a situation where she _really_ wanted to hurt someone.

Except for Cohen.

Her blood boiled at even the murmur of his name in her mind.

Kara's arms tightened around Alex and her voice, though still a wheeze, strengthened in fervency. "We're going to be okay," she repeated.

A singular shudder quaked it's way down Alex's body and she sighed into the top of Kara's shoulder. She was meant to be the one comforting Kara, not the other way around. She was the big sister, the protector. After Kara's fight with Red Tornado, when they'd gone home and discussed what it meant to take a life in order to save the life of someone else, they had agreed that while Kara protected the world, Alex protected her. That was how it worked, they'd said.

_Except for now_. That was at least how it felt to her in the present. She felt like everything was coming apart, like she was on brink of losing everything that meant anything to her. How could you beat someone who could literally _control_ you?

"He's going to slip up, Alex," Kara said as if reading her mind. "He will, and when he does, you'll be ready. You'll get us out of here."

Alex pulled back out of the hug and met Kara's eyes. " _We'll_ be ready," she corrected.

Kara nodded, but Alex saw it, the flicker of worry, of doubt, deep within those sky blue orbs. She frowned slightly at the sight and immediately squeezed her sister's arm. "Hey," she said gently, ducking her head just so to catch the gaze Kara had dropped away, no doubt upon realizing her inner turmoil had been found out. "What's going on in there?" Alex asked, looking directly at Kara's forehead for a moment to clarify what she was talking about.

Kara shook her head. "I'm just… I'm so tired, Alex." There was something fractured about her tone, something desperate, crestfallen, and vaguely ashamed.

Just as Kara could read Alex, Alex could easily read her little sister. She was feeling weak, useless. She felt like she was a burden.

"Rest," Alex told her.

Kara shook her head again. "No, I should really stay—"

"Kara," Alex cut her off. She took a patient breath and brushed Kara's disheveled hair out of her face, tucking it back behind her ear. "You are the strongest person I know," she whispered, her throat clenching with emotion, "with or without your powers. And we're going to need that strength to get out of here. So I need you to rest. Please."

Kara stared at her for a long moment, searching Alex's face with tormented eyes. Alex could see it easily, the war between the bone-weary exhaustion and the desire to stay awake and keep them both guarded against whatever Cohen might throw at them next. Her instinct, much like Alex's, was always to take care of those around her, to protect.

"Please," Alex repeated, and she saw the second the exhaustion won.

Kara sighed and gave a nod.

Alex was about to suggest that she move to the "sleeping" pad further down the wall so that she'd at least be a little bit more comfortable, but Kara was already slipping stiffly down and curling up on her side the best she could, resting her head against Alex's thigh.

Instead of pointing out that it was her injured leg Kara was lying against (because really, the entire limb hurt enough that a little more pressure wasn't going to do much more damage to it), Alex simply started combing her fingers through her sister's limp, flaxen hair in soft, smooth motions. Kara had admitted once not too long after her arrival on Earth that her mother had done it when she was young and she'd always found it soothing. After that, Alex had taken to doing the same thing whenever Kara was struggling and really needed comfort.

"If he comes back…" Kara murmured, already dozing off.

"I'll wake you," Alex assured her. "Just sleep now."

Kara mumbled something that sounded like "Mmkay," then within a minute, Alex heard her breathing even out and she was sure her little sister was asleep. She knew that if it hadn't been for all the abuse she'd endured, Kara would be sitting up beside her, awake and ready to plot an escape, but she had just been through so much. Her battered body was insisting on rest and there was nothing Kara could do but listen to its demands.

Alex was exhausted, too. Her entire being ached with weariness, but there was no way she would sleep. She looked across the cell, a strange, macabre, almost magnetic pull bringing her gaze back to Deacon's pallid face. She _couldn't_ sleep, not with Deacon's vacant eyes still staring at her, but more so, not when Cohen could show up at any moment and threaten Kara's life again.

She would stay awake, stay awake and watch over her sister. She would protect her. That was her job and though she'd been failing at it, she would not give up, not ever. She would do whatever it took. She stared at the reflection of the florescent lights in Deacon's dead eyes. No, she had _already_ done it.

_And she would keep doing it._

Alex took a resolved breath. Her sister wanted her to take the higher ground, but what Kara's hero's heart didn't comprehend was that sometimes there was no higher ground. She _would_ kill Cohen if that's what it took to keep Kara alive and she would do so without hesitation.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC! Took a little longer to write than I wanted, BUT it is still here! Many of you were wanting an Alex and Kara scene, so hopefully this little one was to your liking!
> 
> It was meant to end a different way, on another rather mean cliffhanger, but I thought you all (and these poor characters) needed a bit of a reprieve. I shan't be so kind in the next chapter! You have been warned. :D :D :D
> 
> Also, Of COURSE Myriad is (SPOILER) mind control... *grumbles* Oh well. I figure you all, at this point, are invested enough in the story that you want to read it to it's end anyway! Much love to all you most glorious people!


	10. Chapter 10

_Crrrrack._

_Pop, pop._

_"This may tingle a bit."_

_Acrid. Warm._

_Tight._

_Too bright._

_Powerless._

_Burning, burning,_ _**burning** _ _._

It snapped her awake, the burning. It seared and for a torturous beat, a beat before she laid eyes on her slumbering sister, she couldn't breathe. When she saw Kara's face, though, bruised and pale as it was, a pressure released in her mind and the pain receded, ushering the flashes back into the dark.

She'd fallen asleep, she realized, and she cursed herself. She hadn't meant to. She'd meant to stay awake, to stay vigil, and she was furious with herself for failing at her task.

Nothing had happened —Kara was still sleeping (not quite peacefully, more the boneless sleep of the painfully exhausted), Deacon was still lying dead on the floor twelve feet away— but that was beside the point. How was she meant to save her sister if she couldn't even stay awake?

_Wait..._

As her eyes scanned the room, she realized that she'd been wrong. Something _had_ happened. There was a tray of food in the cell. When had that happened? Why hadn't she woken up?

The squeak of metal grinding against metal reverberated off the glass as the door suddenly swung open. "Ah, good."

An angry tightening of her chest and a raucous nausea met the sound of Cohen's voice. He smiled at her. He might have looked friendly if it hadn't been for the hint of madness in his translucent eyes.

Alex immediately lifted Kara's head off of her thigh and laid her carefully on the ground before she maneuvered stiffly up onto her feet. It was a testament to her sister's sheer exhaustion that she didn't wake at the movement.

"I stopped by earlier, but was loath to rouse you," he told her cheerfully. "Seeing as you've now woken on your own though, we can begin."

"Begin what?" she bit out, limping painfully forward a step to better place herself between him and her prone sister. It creeped her out more than she could say that he had seen her while she'd been sleeping and her shoulders cramped as the weight of her failure compounded tenfold.

"The next step, of course." He moved up to the cell door, Milo behind him. "If you'll come with me, please."

"I'm not going anywhere," she replied, though even as the words were leaving her lips, she knew they were pointless.

The cheer disappeared from Cohen's face, a shadow slipping across his features. "Must I repeat this with everyone?"

Alex just glared at him.

He sighed and shook his head, his eyes now on his tablet. "Agent Danvers, stay still… and stop breathing." It was said simply, with no real force to the words.

And yet, Alex was helpless to resist. Immediately her body grew rigid and her lungs seized.

"Alex?"

She heard Kara's voice, soft and sleep-scattered.

"W-what's going on?"

Alex wanted to answer, to comfort her, but she was paralyzed. Not having been able to take a full breath before being forced under the Cohen's spell, her lungs were already burning, eyes watering, and all she could see was trenchant ice staring at her through the glass, his malignity only half-heartedly veiled. There was almost something… gleeful about his expression. It reminded her of the face of a child watching with wicked jubilance as he set ants ablaze with a magnifying glass.

"Alex?" Kara tried again.

She was sweating, a smoldering ache throbbing through her clenched throat, and her legs were beginning to tremble. Alex heard the sound of her sister shifting and the pained little gasp she made when she, Alex assumed, climbed to her feet. A moment later, Kara's concerned face came into view. "Alex, what's going on?"

She could feel the violent beat of her panicking heart thudding at the base of her throat as it tried to pump the quickly-vanishing oxygen throughout her body. Terrifying shadows began creeping into her vision, dark and final.

She watched Kara whip around to face Cohen. "What did you do to her?" her sister questioned, voice shrill with fear. "Stop it!"

There was a long beat before Cohen blinked and turned his gaze on Kara. He seemed almost… surprised to see her there, as if he'd forgotten she was even in the cell. The surprise immediately turned to irritation. "Agent Danvers is learning a vital lesson."

"What?" The question was confused and frantic. "That doesn't— You have to stop!" Kara cast a panicked look back at Alex. "You're killing her!"

Alex didn't even feel her legs give out. She just found herself suddenly on the ground, the harsh impact as her skull met the floor sending flares of pinpointed light through her fading vision.

Kara dropped down beside Alex and pulled her halfway up into her lap, her chest supporting Alex's back from behind. "Please, _please_ stop!" Kara beseeched.

The burning in her lungs had reached unbearable and Alex felt the quaking in her legs turn to full convulsions, spreading up her body. Kara's arms tightened around her and she felt a hiccupped sob escape her little sister. "Stop it, stop it."

There was a long moment in the seconds before her tunneling vision was consumed by the creeping darkness where Cohen just stood in silence, his gaze calculating. It was at that moment when Alex knew for sure that she was going to die.

But then a single word crossed his lips: "Breathe."

Alex gasped wildly, sucking it huge, choking breaths. The blackness receded, though the shaking only lessened slightly. Chest heaving, she inhaled oxygen as fast as she possibly could. It was making her dizzy, but she didn't care. She just needed the air, needed to breathe.

Kara buried her face atop Alex's shoulder and shuddered. Alex could feel the warm dampness of the tears her sister was attempting to hide slipping down her shoulder blade. She reached up with a trembling hand and cupped the side of Kara's head, lacing her fingers through the messy blonde locks.

"Do you understand now, Agent Danvers?"

Alex snapped her eyes over to Cohen and felt a consuming rage slice through her chest at the sight of the smugness on his face.

When she didn't say anything, his expression tightened. " _Well_?"

"Yes," she bit out, grudging and tense with loathing.

A self-satisfied smile slithered across his lips and he puffed up his chest just so. "Excellent," he replied. "Now, if you'll come with me."

Gritting her teeth, Alex pulled out of Kara's arms and sat up straight.

"Alex?" The address was tremulous and terrified. Alex knew what her fearful tone meant — that Kara was scared and didn't want her to leave. She'd heard the same tone so many times as a girl when young Kara, still so new to Earth and uncertain of everything around her, had been afraid to be left alone.

She turned her head to look at her sister's splotchy, tear-stained face. "I have to go," she whispered and though Kara shook her head, Alex knew that her sister understood there was no choice. She twisted herself around the best she could and pulled Kara into a careful hug. "I'll be back," she promised. She desperately hoped she'd be able to keep her word.

"Let's go, Agent Danvers," Cohen pressed, losing patience.

Before she allowed her instinct to always care for her sister (especially when she was scared) persuade her to chance a second attempt at defying the madman before them, Alex freed herself of the embrace and tottered up onto her feet. Her knee sang in angry, angry protest and she had to bite down hard to keep any pained gasps or hisses from escaping.

Milo opened the cell and took Alex by the arm the moment she stepped out. Cohen turned and headed for the steel door leading out of the room. Milo nudged her forward. Just as they were about to follow Cohen out, Alex glanced back to see her sister just sitting on her knees in the cell, tears trailing down her pale cheeks. Alex's heart twisted painfully at the sight.

 

* * *

 

It was a warehouse, Alex realized as she limped along behind Cohen and took in the building's massive size. It smelled of a discordant mix of mildew and industrial cleaner — sterile, but still with a hint of damp. It looked pristine, the floor the same winter white as was in the cells, but the brick walls and the flecks of rust tarnishing the industrial beams near the roof told her that it was an older structure.

The lab with the cells was nestled in the back corner, sectioned off and isolated, and along the far wall all the way across the expanse of near-empty space there was a computer cluster, a large system of linked servers connected to make a single supercomputer. From what she could see from that distance, it all looked state of the art, which brought two questions immediately to Alex's mind: Where was Cohen getting his funding from and what precisely could he be doing that would require that amount of computing power? Alex could only speculate and everything her mind came up with left a hollow ache of worry in her gut. Nothing he was doing could be good.

The place wasn't just empty though, it was _vacant_. The only other souls she could see were her escort and Gunnar, who was up ahead. She knew there had to be more somewhere as the three who had kidnapped Kara during their walk to the car from the movie theater had been completely different men. Where were they now? How many were there? It was difficult to make an exit plan with so many unknown variables.

And the mind control thing, too. That really made things challenging.

"If you would please have a seat," Cohen said as they reached the only other thing in the entire space — an exam chair. There was a computer, lab table, and other equipment surrounding it, but the chair, with its ebony leather starkly contrasting the white of the floor, is what stood out. Alex swallowed hard. There was something about the cool steel cuffs on both the arms and footrest that made her stomach clench.

She instinctively hesitated for a beat and couldn't help but notice the look of forbearance fastly fleeting slip across Cohen's face. _Pick your battles_ , her mind whispered at her. She wouldn't be able to save her sister if Cohen killed her for not doing as he said. She sat down.

He smiled at her. "Finally, some progress." He looked at his two men and gave a nod before he began tapping away at the keyboard of the nearby computer.

Milo and Gunnar moved in on either side of Alex and secured the restraints, first over her wrists then over her ankles. The cold metal bit into her flesh. She grit her teeth at it.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you your face would get stuck that way? My mother did. Many, many times." He sounded irritated by it.

She was glaring, Alex realized, glaring at Cohen's turned back. She wondered for a brief moment how he would know, but then caught herself in the reflection of the computer and understood. She narrowed her eyes further in response.

Cohen gave a dramatic sigh and turned away from the computer to face her. "If you have something to say, I would get it off your chest now," he said, and Alex easily heard the "because you won't be able to later" he'd no doubt left hanging there intentionally.

"Why?" she ground out.

"Please catch up, Agent Danvers," he huffed. "I've already told you what this is for—"

"No. I mean Deacon."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Deacon?"

"You could have stopped him."

"I could have, yes," he agreed, "but it wasn't necessary to." He shrugged. "You weren't meant to bring anyone with you when you were activated and recalled here. It was just a fortuitous happenstance."

Alex frowned. Fortuitous? For who? Not Deacon. He had been delivered to his death with no choice but to accept it.

Cohen seemed to correctly interpret her expression because he smiled and said, "As we've already discussed, with every scenario comes new data, even when that scenario is death. It was unfortunate, but I promise you the data collected from Agent Deacon's passing will be utilized in a way that will benefit countless others."

He spoke as if Deacon had died in a car accident or had had a heart attack, not been brainwashed to the point of forcing someone to murder him.

She felt suddenly sick again and it made her excruciatingly mad. She was so tired of feeling sick.

She was so tired of being manipulated and tortured, so tired of seeing her sister in pain. She was so tired of Cohen's voice and his smile and his delusional beliefs that he was the good guy in this twisted situation. She was just so damn _tired_ and she wanted out.

_She wanted out._

"In fact, the information we gathered from that encounter has already been particularly helpful," Cohen continued, his tone turning almost giddy. "As a scientist, I think you'll find this fascinating." He turned back to the computer, typing in a few commands with a flourish of dexterous taps of the keys. A moment later, he tilted the screen so Alex could see it. He grinned at her, almost bouncing in place in what seemed to be prideful delight.

Alex looked past him at the screen. It took her only moments to comprehend what she was seeing them. She gasped softly, the feeling of dreads icy fingers skittering down her spine. "Nanites."

Cohen looked so very pleased. "Nanites," he confirmed. "Microscopic programmable miracle workers. Given enough time and R-and-D funding, these could, and likely _will_ , do so many amazing things. Cure diseases. Solve the osteoblast degradation issue preventing us from fully exploring outer space. Repair damaged tissue or act as bridges between damaged nerves and the brain. The paralyzed could walk again; the blind could see! Hell, they could even eventually be the key to solving mortality." He took a reverent breath, eyes on the animated model on the screen, and shook his head. "There's just so much they could do, so much potential."

"And yet you've used yours to hijack the brains of innocent people, to force them to do things against their will," Alex accused. "To _kill_ other people."

Cohen's brow furrowed in a manner that reminded Alex of a child who had just been scolded. "I didn't— That's not their purpose."

"Mind control is not their purpose? That's sure as hell what they seem to do."

Cohen blew out a growled huff. "You have a very limited scope, Agent Danvers. I thought perhaps we were kindred spirits, but you have no vision at all."

"I have plenty of vision. The difference is that mine does not extend to kidnapping, coercion, and murder."

Cohen snorted. "That's quite rich coming from someone who works for a secret government organization."

Alex sucked in a sharp breath — his point not altogether invalid. There were some seedier parts of the government that chose more extreme means to achieve their goals. Still... "What we do is to help others, to save lives. _You_ ," she spat the word, biting and full of ire, "you act at your whim with no regard for the lives you're destroying."

"Sometimes progress requires some unsavory choices—"

"That's the thing — you have no right to be making those choices for anyone!"

Cohen stared at her for a few long beats, studied her, head cocked slightly to the side. It was as if he were trying to figure out something most baffling. "You don't like killing," he said, more stated realization than question.

Alex stared at him in disbelief. How was that even something to be surprised at? How could he even consider that she might like it? "Of course not."

"But you're a soldier."

"I'm an agent."

"Same thing. You're a fighter, a warrior."

"Yes, but my job is to _prevent_ violence, not perpetrate it. I don't relish death, I abhor it."

A smile slipped across his thin lips. "Then you have killed before."

The delight in his tone made her gorge rise. He quite clearly meant other than Deacon, Brock, and Ellis. "Only to protect others. Only when there was no other choice," she whispered in defense.

"Yet those deaths still haunt you."

Alex swallowed hard, unable to answer. _Unwilling_ to answer. There were few things that weighed on her more.

He must have take her silence as her answer anyway because he nodded and continued, saying, "Then you should appreciate my work, not condemn it."

"How could I possibly appre—"

"These," he looked back to the screen, pointing at the revolving nanite model, "these were created to help people like you."

Alex narrowed her eyes. She wasn't sure what he was going on about, but the implications sat like a cold, hard rock in her gut.

"Just think, Alex! Can you imagine the military applications? Soldiers who can be programmed to do a job, but then have no memory of it? No hesitation. No PTSD. They would never have to know anything other than they had completed their mission. They would never have to live with the pain that you do." He crouched down beside the chair and gazed up at her with imploring eyes. He gently placed his hand atop hers. "Wouldn't that be better?" he asked, tone… tender. It was like a sick joke and made Alex more queasy than when he was being cruel. "Wouldn't you prefer not to have that pain?"

"No," was her immediate answer. "The pain reminds me that there is a price, that everyone is worth _something_. Wiping out those memories makes taking a life a simple, easy thing and it should never, _ever_ be that."

His eyes grew cold and he withdrew his hand from hers. "We'll see how you feel about that once this is over," he said, drawing himself back up to his full height. "Something tells me that you will beg me to remove the memories."

She frowned, dread once again slicing through her in angry, icy tingles. "What memories?"

"The ones you're about to make."

He sounded like a piece of poorly-written fiction, Alex thought, and in a move that seemed a performance to even further perfect his sinister role, he turned around and picked up a 30 gauge needle, holding it up at eye level. The liquid within the stainless steel syringe glittered with an almost metallic sheen.

Alex grit her teeth as a jolt of familiarity spiked up her spine and settled achingly in her molars. She had been here before, in this very same situation. She couldn't… quite remember —it was like the vestiges of a faded nightmare— but she could _feel_ it.

"Our experiment earlier made me realize something: Sheer force is not always the key." He looked at her expectantly. Alex didn't reply and when he seemed to realize she wouldn't, his expression darkened. "Emotions are...problematic, I realize this now. I thought them tricky, yes, but a challenge easily enough overcome. I _thought_ I could just increase aggression and that would be enough to suppress the rest..." A look of cold irritation slithered over his face. "But you have proven just how pervasive they can be. Pervasive and very powerful."

Cohen seemed intensely vexed by this… and perhaps a bit perplexed? Alex thought that maybe he really was confused by it all. His own emotions seemed so erratic that she wondered if control was his own issue. Or perhaps he didn't feel anything at all, she considered, and that's why he was so taken aback by the flaw in his designs.

He frowned slightly at the syringe in his hand. "With the aggression and limited emotional connections, control is easily achieved, but it seems if the emotions are too strong…" The muscles of his jaw jumped as he clenched it. He shook his head. "Partial control is not good enough, it's not what he wants."

Alex blinked. _He?_

Before she could question it, however, Cohen turned back around to face her fully. "So those connections must be severed." His crystalline eyes met hers again and she shivered at the madness she still saw within them. He offered her a rabid smile. "This may tingle a bit." He jabbed the needle into her neck and pushed down the plunger.

Her vision exploded white. It didn't tingle — it _**burned**_.

And she screamed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive the mega delay on this. Life really blows sometimes. More to come!

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me!
> 
> Tumblr: her-renegade-heart.tumblr.com  
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/renegade_heart


End file.
